
Class 
Book- S "Si 






WHAT LIFE SEEMS 
TO ME 



AN ESSAY 

BY 

S. F. SHOREY 



Second Edition 



The real aim of life seems to be the build- 
ing of the present man into a larger man, one 
having a much greater spherical capacity of 
mind than has anyone we know now as man; 
an expanse of consciousness, of knowledge, * 
of sympathy, of reliability, one having vastly 
higher ideals, greater strength of will, self- 
control, keener insight and appreciation. A 
personality with the above attainments, and 
thereby freed from prejudice and deceit, 
raised above intrigue, greed and selfishness, 
working in co-operative harmony with others, 
seems to be on the way, as a more remote aim 
of the unfolding move. 



OTHER BOOKS BY S. F. SHOREY 



Happiness and Continuous Personality 

A continuation of the subject matter of 
What Life Seems to Me. Price 25c. Postage 
2c. In paper. 

Injustice and National Decay. 

A search foi^ the cause of social disorder 
and national decay. Price in paper 25c; 
in boards 40c. 

Human Progress and Party Functions. 

A study of political party action, to ascer- 
tain which party, if either, tends to be- 
friend the many. Price in paper 25c; in 
boards 40c. 

Human Harmonieis and the Art of Making 
Them. 

Now out of print. A revised edition is in 
preparation. 

The Greater Men and Women. 

Also out of print, and a revised edition is 
in preparation. 



Two new books are in preparation on the sub- 
jects of originality and human intelligence and 
the art of its increase. 



WHAT LIFE SEEMS TO ME 

AN ESSAY 






BY 

S. F. SHOREY 

Author of "The Greater Men and Women as Factors 
of Human Progress," "Injustice and National 
Decay," "Human Progress and Party Func- 
tions,'' "Human Harmonies and the 
Art of l^alcing Them," "Happiness 
and Continuous Personality." 



Seattle, Wn. 

S. F. Shorey^ 

Publisher 






Copyrighted September, 1920 
By 

S. F. Shorey 



OCT 1 3 1920 1 c_ 

»C1A599381 



-\\ <■ 



CONTENTS 

The New Edition 

The Inquiry 

If Death Ends Personality? 

For What Then Do Men Live? 

The Moral Concept — It's Awakening 

Appreciative Feeling 

Must Not Happiness Be Earned? 

Of What, Then, Is Life In Pursuit? 

The Cosmic Urge Within Us 



THE NEW EDITION 



THIS little volume is an inquiry concerning 
the facts of life as they appear and pass on 
before us. What, the question is herein asked, 
does a rational consideration of these facts lead 
us to infer concerning the evolution of human 
capacity, continuous personality and happiness? 
An outline of the results of the inquiry can be 
found in the introductory chapter, ^^The Inquiry/' 

In the preparation of this — the second edition — 
the matter of the first has been largely rewritten, 
enlarged upon, more clearly expressed, and so 
changed in its sequence as to more closely approach 
the natural order. 

The first edition — but a few copies of which 
remain unsold — has been retailed over one coun- 
ter, with advertising confined to the recommenda- 
tion of its readers. This fact speaks for itself 
in the form of results, and has much to do with 
the second appearance of the book in its improved 
form. 



THE INQUIRY 

CONCERNING life as a fact, normally con- 
stituted men and women do not feel in doubt. 
But the how and the why of its creation and final 
destiny they do not know. Nor has the whither 
of its going been far traced with great certainty. 

Even though the entire program of human life, 
past and future, may be passing on before us in 
present-day appearances, the science and the art 
of its reading are but little evolved. 

It is a property of the life concealed in all or- 
ganic forms, to respond more or less awakeningly 
to all its external contacts. The human life leads 
other forms of life, by being more responsive. In 
its higher manifestation known as intelligence, re- 
sponse appears as thought action. 

By the contacts of life, men are set to asking 
questions, and to seeking the answers. With per- 
sistent ejBfort, they appear to answer them improv- 
ingly. 

What, is herein asked, can be the meaning of 
life? What, if anything, approaching an answer, 
can be inferred? What, by a rational procedure 
can be learned from the facts of life as they appear 
and pass on before us? Are we fated beings, and 
if so, to what extent? 

Is free action of the will a human function, and 



if so, at what place does it begin and where end; 
in what events expressed, and in what events not 
expressed? Or are we automatic actors? Do we 
draw our thought supply ready-made from the 
Cosmic fountain of intelligence? Does thinking 
mean merely the tapping of a storehouse of 
ready-made thought forms? Or are we entities 
having some independent power of action, person- 
alities supplied with the materials and principles 
of construction, with sufficient power of will to 
start thinking and building somewhat independ- 
ently, an ever-improving self, through improving 
forms of action? 

Life is a term of existence in the midst of sur- 
roundings in which the sphere of human conscious- 
ness may be seen awakening and enlarging by 
struggle. By the facts of life, men are often led 
to infer and reason out other, similar facts, which 
lie beyond experience. In other words, we are 
invited, even urged by the experiences of life to 
guess, and we are encouraged to keep on guessing, 
by meeting with a reasonable amount of success. 
Among the many factors of human progress, this 
power to guess correctly stands near, if not at the 
head. 

What, then, of the human life, we again in- 
quire? Did it start automatically, spontaneously; 



did it just happen, or was it instituted? If insti- 
tuted, was it set up for the sole purpose of this 
one life, made up of struggle, serving, perhaps, as 
its creator's plaything? 

There is in life's move, that which has the ap- 
pearance of design or purpose, in that it is enticing 
and driving all men to build to bettering, purpose- 
ful ends. 

Some things have come to seem quite plain ; social 
improvement, for instance, from which all persons 
are receiving more or less benefit. 

Since evolution is now fairly well understood, 
the student finds strewn along the unfolding path- 
way of the races of men, evidence that civilizing 
progress has been made, but made slowly; and, 
while bettering results have been cumulating, the 
speed of forward move has been accelerating. 
Though not quite so evident, the individual also 
has been and is improving. 

In both cases, improvement appears to have taken 
place largely through events which arrived from 
beyond human consciousness. Men have been 
driven and coaxed to improve far more than they 
have volunteered to improve. Intelligence and will 
being slow to awaken, personality slow in the build- 
ing, increase in the amount and quality of human 
initiative also is achieved but slowly. 

8 



All appear compelled to pass through great ex- 
periences of trouble, to learn what seems to be 
comparatively little; experiences involving individ- 
ual sacrifices far too great for the amount of gain, 
if valued for the use secured during the time of 
a single life; while not a few are made to sacrifice 
life to gain personally no more than an empty glory, 
of which they can know nothing. 

This movement, taking place very largely through 
^n unavoidable and brutal struggle, leads us to in- 
quire why some plan could not have been devised 
to secure all this improvement, and even more, in 
a comfortable way. 

Life moves improvingly onward. 

In most things having sense contact, a bettering 
change may be observed ; the building, tearing down 
and rebuilding, and in this effort to build better 
forms, the power to build cumulates. 

On turning to history, evidence is found of civ- 
ilizing improvement. With each epoch a better 
social organism appears, made and used by individ- 
uals for their own enjoyment and improvement. 
But if this life is all, we pause to inquire the 
why of this struggle ; by what necessity established ? 

If this life is all, to what end is all this effort 
expended, more than in the building of the child's 
playhouse? For this life gives but little justice, 



returns but little happiness to the individuals en- 
gaged in the building struggle. 

In the facts of life we are unable to discover 
much evidence of a plan to give liberally of enjoy- 
ment in this life. On the contrary, evidence ap- 
pears more plentiful of a plan to keep men so far 
on the way, fighting and uncomfortable, a fact 
which leads us to infer that these conflicts of life 
may be building for us all a strength of personality, 
that peace, justice and happiness could not build. 

Stupidity, dishonesty, crime and tumult in the 
midst of great and happiness-making things to 
easily learn and to do, cannot be accounted for by 
a one-life theory, set in motion by an all-wise, all- 
powerful and just creator, having in view the hap- 
piness of human beings in this life. There is some- 
thing more, very apparently, that life is trying to 
build. 

For though men seek happiness, through all the 
other things they seek in life, they succeed in finding 
no large amount of happiness. 

Evidently, however, something is gained. A 
gain in size and strength of personality may be 
observed. Even under the most adverse circum- 
stances, we are led by appearances and reason to 
believe that each leaves life a somewhat larger 
personality than he came. 

10 



We are well aware of much of how men live, 
and by what they live. But for what do they live? 
What becomes of this larger grown man? When 
he passes from our view does he cease to live and 
improve? Is this the end? Is he denied for all 
time the enjoyment of that which he has worked 
and sacrificed to gain? If this life is all, he has 
lived only to assist in the evolution of a social 
organism. 

But the social organism is not a living entity. 
It has no personality, no self-consciousness. Can 
its evolution, as some contend, be the central pur- 
pose of the struggle of life? Which, the makers or 
the made, the personalities or their evolving social 
equipment, appears most likely to be preserved and 
continued ? 

Is the struggle engaged in evolving larger intel- 
ligences, in the building and preservation of the 
rational element, the thinking personality, the self- 
conscious being, a larger man? If not, what? 
Even now, does not the larger man appear to be 
on the way, having passed the beginner's point of 
personal initiative, the initial stage of free-will 
action, having arrived at a place from which on- 
ward he is to do more of his own thinking and 
building ? 

Is there not, then, evidence of the coming through 

11 



human growth of a larger man than what we 
now know as man, a being equipped with far great- 
er expanse of consciousness, greater knowledge, 
greater strength of will ; with the keener sensibilities 
through which more reliability, sympathy and in- 
creased power of appreciation can find expression, 
making up on the whole, the greater capacity to 
enjoy? 

The dispute over whether the creator of this 
universe is a personal being or a cosmic intelli- 
gence, matters not in the least. But there are some 
thoughts that do matter, some considerations that 
have a practical bearing on the philosophy of life. 

If the creator of this universe is the omnipotent 
and omniscient intelligence he appears to us to be, 
and if in the creation of the human being he had 
in view a one-term life of happiness, the task for 
such a being would have been a simple one to per- 
form. 

Would such a creator have created and envi- 
roned the human being as we find him? Would 
he not have created him with a capacity for enjoy- 
ment far transcending present capacity, created him 
wise and honest at the start; surrounded by all of 
the enjoyable which he has now reached, and even 
far more? 

By what necessity is he driven and coaxed 

12 



through the struggle of life as we find it, to obtain 
the little that life gives? 

For whether cosmic or personal, how can we 
conceive this power to be other than intelligent, 
and sufficiently so to have created at the start a 
condition to give and a human being with a capac- 
ity to receive far more happiness than he is now 
obtaining? 

Even if this life is all, and this brutal struggle 
a necessity, happiness could still have been made 
possible to the human being, by so equipping him 
with desires and nerves, as to enable him to find 
a completed enjoyment in whatever surroundings 
he might be placed. 

If this life is all, and the creator is the being we 
conceive him to be, why does life fail so signally 
to meet the requirements of our concept? Such 
a God could not fail. There is something wrong, 
either with our god concept or with our theories 
of life and its purpose — one or both. 

If this life is all, it is a cruel affair, even though 
due to limited human understanding and perverse 
conduct. For man has had nothing to do with 
his own creating, and but little with his subsequent 
building. If, therefore, he is the product of a just 
and omnipotent creator, and has but this one life 
to live, why was he not created with sufficient 

13 



intelligence to understand the plan and to avoid 
that which brings upon him so much unhappiness? 

Many occurrences, if measured by a one-life 
theory, may justly be termed cruel, as in Nature's 
wanton destruction of human life and property; 
the storms of human passion and greed, daily taking 
place, beyond the power of human beings to control. 

And if the personalities do not survive the pro- 
cess by which they are improved, if after being en- 
larged, they are not preserved and passed on through 
to the other side, to enjoy the growth which they 
have worked and suffered to gain, how can all this 
infernal experience be claimed as the work of an 
all-wise kindly father and just creator? 

If this life is all, then many of the facts of life 
are not seemingly cruel — they are actually so. Un- 
less suffering is carving out larger men and women, 
building soul capacity, larger personality, it is sim- 
ply the infliction of pain, for which we can see 
no purpose. 

But the great trials of life are constructive in 
their effect. As a rule, suffering projects into fu- 
ture action a larger-grown personality, in evidence 
of a design having in view the welfare of the indi- 
vidual. 

Whereas, were it possible to now establish a 
condition conforming to the highest ideals among 

14 



us, would it not at this crude stage of growth work 
human degeneracy; as becomes evident from what 
happens to most men when a little prosperity is 
gained ? 

The foregoing, with so much more among the 
facts of life not yet understood, except that they 
are realized to infinitely transcend in greatness the 
greatest power of human understanding, when duly 
considered, leads to the inference that the existing 
plan of life and action is one well fitted — best 
fittted, it seems most probable — to secure the high- 
est end of human welfare, and that the carrying 
out of the program along this line will some time 
culminate to this end. 

In fact, this may be the only possible way to 
achieve the end in view. For could man have been 
projected into this life with great and perfected 
capacity to enjoy, with surroundings to corre- 
spond, how could he perform other than automat- 
ically? It gradually dawns upon the consciousness 
that, in order to make of man a freely-acting entity, 
the cruelties of life may be indispensable; anyhow, 
they are an unavoidable part of the established 
process of all unconscious unfoldment. 

In this way, feeling and appreciation of posses- 
sions are cultivated intensively, the will increased 
in freedom, strength and sphere of action, and the 

15 



purpose thereby served of driving man into awak- 
ening, and into the undertaking of conscious self- 
cultivation. 

It would appear difficult for a rationally func- 
tioning mind to believe that a blind un-conscious 
force could contrive and set in motion the law of 
unfolding life known as evolution; that a struc- 
tural, effect revealing an intelligence so far tran- 
scending the power of human interpretation as we 
find it, could be planned and set in motion by an 
unintelligent cause. 

In their efforts to learn something of the mean- 
ing of life by collecting, classifying and interpret- 
ing some of the facts of life, scientific investigators 
have made many important discoveries. But com- 
paratively few of the facts have yet been observed, 
and fewer still collected and classified, while those 
already dealt with, seem to have been but partially 
interpreted. 

So far as present gain of knowledge goes to 
explain lifers meaning or purpose, other than that 
we are improving, and seem to be on the way to a 
larger and better life, little has been accomplished 
by scientists, and most of the interpreting efforts 
of religion-makers are unscientific and feeble 
guesses — many of them absurd. 



16 



IF DEATH ENDS PERSONALITY 

SO much, in introductory outline. But for what 
purpose, if any, are men evolving. Why are 
they being coaxed and driven to act in mass har- 
mony? 

The social fabric of a people is determined by, 
and is equal in value to the average of their intel- 
ligence. Upon their intelligence depends their mu- 
tual understanding, harmony of mass action relia- 
bility, moral conduct and consequent happiness. 
And upon their experiences of life and education, 
depends their intelligence. 

As before noted, the social organism has no per- 
sonality, no consciousness. It serves its units, but 
can neither enjoy nor suffer. It is not, evidently, 
an end in itself any more than is a steam engine. 
Instrumentally, it assists the growth of its human 
creators, like the steam engine, by reflex, in the 
same manner as human growth and happiness are 
assisted by all other human contrivances. 

There seems to be some further object in this 
struggle in which man is so buffeted and wantonly 
sacrificed; this struggle in which he awakens to 
find himself submerged and compelled by the ne- 
cessities of his existence to take part, with no knowl- 
edge of whence he came, whither and for what pur- 
pose he is being driven, with no possibility of 

17 



escape, except through the gateway of death; some 
object other than either a continuously bettering 
society, or bettering individuals in a series, each 
member of which becomes extinguished with phys- 
ical death. 

Does there not appear herein an aim which lies 
beyond the one of social evolution, a further and 
larger aim, an aim to unfold present human per- 
sonalities into beings greatly transcending present 
human understanding; an aim to build that which 
rises above social forms, survives physical death, 
and toward the fulfillment of which the social 
organism serves but instrumentally ? 

If this life is all, what matters anything but to 
squeeze out of each day's experience the last spark 
of pleasure possible, along lines of least resistance, 
as many are now doing? If this is all, why spend 
so much time and effort in learning and earning that 
which this life leaves neither the time nor the 
opportunity to use? 

Why does life as we find it demand the injustice 
of personal sacrifice? For if this life is all, can the 
belief that this sacrifice is a noble unselfishness be 
other than a delusion, due to the stupidity of men 
taught by privilege-holding leaders and dark age 
religions. 

If this life is all, why should any man of the 

18 



present generation sacrifice his happinesSj much less 
his lifcj to gain that for the next generation, which 
its individuals may then be but little better able 
to appreciate, than are we what has been gained 
for us by the sacrifice of those who have passed 
on before us? 

If this life is all, what right has society, more 
than the god of a pagan temple, to demand of the 
individual a sacrifice for which it can give nothing 
in return ? 

When viewed from the standpoint of one life, 
what can be more absurd and unjust than this call 
upon some individuals — the young men, for in- 
stance — to give their lives for other individuals 
in whom they can have no possible interest, that 
unborn generations may enjoy what they are called 
upon to throw away? If this life is all, at what 
place, in what manner, and to whom does all this 
sacrifice bring enjoyable glory? 

Unless there is more, can it be other than a 
great mistake, a deluding lie? 

If the human life has no further purpose than 
that which may be achieved in about three score 
years and ten, neither it nor society has much value ; 
not enough, in fact, to pay individuals for the 
trouble of being born and fighting for existence. 
For unless personality survives bodily death — unless 

19 



evolutionary results are individually retained, life, 
with the discomfort and struggle through w^hich 
most of the inhabitants of this world are obliged 
to pass, has but little value — in some cases is quite 
worthless — and a few lives appear to be consid- 
erably in the nature of an imposition. 

If this be all— if physical death means personal 
extinction — life's great irony is that we fail to 
awaken to most of our possibilities and opportu- 
nities until too late for this awakening to be of any 
value. 

If personal existence ends with this life, there 
is but little worth being created for; neither is 
there anything in life that can be satisfactorily 
explained. If this short life, out of which even 
the most fortunate obtain but little, is all, why 
were we created ? To what end these agonies, some 
of which no one escapes? 

If our career on earth is all, why pursue either 
wealth or wisdom, at the expense of the pleasures 
of each day? For even with the most successful 
efforts, neither comes early enough to be long en- 
joyed. 

Nor can the fortune which comes ready-made 
be sufficiently appreciated to be much enjoyed, or 
for long. However, the fact that compulsory action 
is found set up in the law of life as a condition of 

20 



existence, is freighted with meaning and there is 
much therefrom for the student to learn. Life 
must be fought for; substance, as well as appre- 
ciative capacity to enjoy must be earned. 

There is at work in life ever unfolding action, 
moving in response to what appears to be some 
design. 

With great effort men learn and earn much that 
they have no time to use, and if they are not given 
the opportunity of another life in which to use 
and enjoy the knowledge, if not the means, which 
they gain too late to use and enjoy in this existence, 
are they not denied that to which they are entitled, 
from, an allwise and just creator? 

If what we feel in the matter be reliable, if we 
know what justice is, and assume that this one life 
comprises all there is of existence, is it not absurd 
to also assume that creation is the work of a wise 
and just God? 

The religions of the world postulate a just cre- 
ator, but in most cases with little proof to offer 
in support of their theory, that any rational person 
could accept. Of course there are many facts of 
life leading us to infer that somehow, somewhere 
and some time, to each individual, is given an exact 
measure of justice. Such facts are misleading, how- 
ever, and the inference is wrong, unless the indi- 

21 



vidual life, so long as desired, is a continuous one. 

To create the human being, with a desire to 
learn, in an environment where he is both driven 
and encouraged to learn that which he has no time 
to use, to allow him to make mistakes which he is 
given no time to correct, to compel him to see what 
he has missed, what he might have been, what he 
might have accomplished, when too late to be of 
any personal value, does not appear to the rational 
person to be just. If all this preparation is given 
no opportunity to serve some purpose which very 
evidently it has no time to serve here, what can be 
its meaning? 

If personal existence ends with physical death, 
why all this unfairness of inequality which lies 
beyond the control of the individual, as found in 
parentage, education, environment, natural capacity, 
and what we call accident or circumstance? 

If in proof of continuous life, that which so 
strongly urges us to learn what can be of no earthly 
use, to do also so much that can be but little or not 
at all enjoyed — if this desire for personal contin- 
uity and the effort to achieve this end has no mean- 
ing — if the discoveries of modern science and psy- 
chic research contribute nothing in proof thereof, 
we have no proof left. 

And unless further life be a fact, what we do 

22 



on earth beyond self-preservation and daily en- 
joyment can matter but little, for we are deceived 
by our feelings, our hopes and the many facts of 
life. We are, in fact, merely puppets, serving in 
what capacity we do not know, unless, perhaps, as 
our creator^s playthings. 

So he who is not reasonably well convinced by 
the evidence within and around him, of the per- 
sistence of his personality, has a right to be a pes- 
simist; for it must be difficult for one who sees 
no proof of further life for the individual to be 
an optimist. 

When one tells me that he feels his life to be 
worth the living merely for this one life, and that 
if I do not feel the same it is my own fault — if he 
believes what he says — he is not constituted like 
myself. His consciousness, his desires, his aspira- 
tions, his sense of justice are not like mine — we 
differ radically. 

Through some element of personality with which 
I am not equipped, this man has been able either 
to obtain from life so much of satisfaction that if, 
as he closes his eyes for the last time, he does not 
quite welcome the extinction in which he believes, 
he is but little disturbed by the prospect. 

This life does not satisfy me — I desire more. Of 
what value to me is what I might have been, but 

23 



am not; what I might have accomplished, but did 
not; what I might have enjoy ed, but did not; and 
all for the reason that I did not know enough? 

Why is it that I have failed to make the ex- 
perience of this life so complete as to satisfy my 
desires for life? In fact, why does living intensify 
my desire for life, even to the extent of continuous 
existence, or until my desire for life has become 
exhausted? Why do we find so many in search 
cf some elixir of life? 

It cannot be because this present life affords so 
much happiness. Is it not, then, in the hope of 
better things to come, the few samples of happi- 
ness, experienced on the way, in the vision they 
furnish of a future of increasing happiness through 
increase of honesty, efficiency and wisdom; in the 
probability these glimpses afford of a continuous 
and improving personality? 

Through lack of ability to obtain and to use 
them, most of the opportunities in the world are 
at present of no value to most men. Why is it 
that capacity to discover, to invent, to use and to 
enjoy, must be acquired? 

The many wonderful possibilities in ourselves 
and in our environment, just ahead and in sight, 
with others constantly coming into view, indicate 

24 



that we are moving forward in response to some 
unseen purpose. 

But of what value to us of today are all these 
unmaterialized visions, all this monopolized and 
idle wealth, the million and one things of use; 
things which everybody will be able to obtain a 
few generations hence, when we are dead, and men 
have become wiser? 

There are millions in the world, who on grad- 
ually awakening, would feel the tremendous in- 
justice and incompleteness of life much more keen- 
ly, if at the same time they also felt that this one 
life is the extent of personal duration. 

What better scheme to torture those who believe 
that individual life ends with this material exist- 
ence could be devised, than the one of awakening 
them to a knowledge of what they have missed ; 
to a realization of what they might have accom- 
plished and enjoyed, and only at a time of life too 
late for this awakening to be to them of any per- 
sonal value? 

Why, if this life is all, the growing keenness of 
feeling among us that it is not well to take ad- 
vantage of our fellow man? 

Few persons care to repeat the experiences of 
life, but nearly all do desire, with what they have 
gainedj to live on and continue the improvement. 

25 



And if you, reader, do not belong in this great 
company of men and women who see what they 
have missed through their ignorance, who see what 
fools they have been, and only when too late for 
the discovery to be of any personal use — there are 
but few of your kind. 

If you feel that life has given you so nearly 
that which through your aspirations and surround- 
ings it promised you, that desire for more is dead 
within you, and you are quite content, at death, 
to bid a final adieu to personal existence, you are 
certainly unique. If this be your feeling in the 
matter, do you not so far differ in consciousness 
from the mass of the human family, so far depart 
from the normal, as to belong among the human 
freaks, curios or unclassified mutations of life? 

Anyhow, you are distinctive — a one-life optimist — 
one equipped with a condition of mind which may 
be due to the fact that either you have not yet 
awakened to the desire for more life or have out- 
grown the desire. 

If, on the other hand, you feel that personality 
ends with physical death, while at the same time 
you see and feel the incompleteness and injustice 
thereby entailed — see what your ignorance and other 
handicaps have caused you to miss, and without re- 
course of further opportunity for expression — if 

26 



you are a being in whom desire for further life 
and expression has awakened and is not yet ex- 
hausted, you have a right to be a pessimist. What 
else can you be? 

If it be true that in your own experience, in 
your interpretation of Nature^s meaning, in the 
reading to be found in the well-expressed sciences 
of life (the biological sciences), in the fields cov- 
ered by physics and chemistry, in the promise of 
hope, so strongly implanted by Nature within the 
majority, in the evidence psychic research has to 
offer; if in all these you find insufficient evidence 
of continuous personality to lead you to believe 
in its probability, this belief is in you difficult and 
perhaps impossible to awaken. But if this be true, 
what argument can you find for natural justice, 
what proof in all Nature of the existence of a 
moral law, what foundation upon which to build 
an ethical science, what reason for believing Nature 
to be anything but unjust and cruel? 

If you have been successfully taught to believe 
in the hell of our current religion, as a place to 
which you may be consigned as a future habitation, 
you still have a cause for complaint, and may wel- 
come extinction, for extinction beats hell. 

In this life, just when lessons have been learned, 
which, had they been known at the beginning might 

27 



have made life worth living, the learner dies, and 
if his work has borne fruit, the bulk of this fruit 
will be gathered and enjoyed (or, as a rule, squan- 
dered) by others. 

In fact, to those believing that present existence 
begins and ends all for the individual, most lives 
must seem to be failures, for they can see that the 
majority are compelled to take part in a drama in 
which the shrewdest, most selfish and unscrupulous 
shirkers often win; in fact, that the triumph of the 
villain is so frequent as to quite compel the denial 
of the existence of compensation, of any natural 
plan to secure final justice. 

The average life, although one of sufficient com- 
fort to keep the individual interested and doing, is 
far from being ideal, while the lives of at least 
twenty-five in one hundred of the human family 
are filled with extreme experiences of suffering, 
many of which are disastrous and tragic. These 
experiences often follow in quick succession. 

Think of being caught in a train wreck, pinned 
under a car, and slowly roasted to death; think of 
the religious martyrs of the Middle Ages; think of 
the poverty-stricken inhabitants of all large cities; 
the victims of disease, of shipwreck, of bank fail- 
ures, demagogues, fakirs, coal mine disasters, and 
of war. If we have but one life, are these insti- 

28 



tuted in the nature of things by a kind and benevo- 
lent father? 

If none of the million and one aspirations in- 
herent in each of us are ever to be realized, why 
do they exist? Have they no meaning? 



29 



FOR WHAT, THEN, DO MEN LIVE? 

FOR what, then, do men live? No man in this 
life ever succeeds in realizing more than a frac- 
tion of his ambitions. Were the human life confined 
to this one term of existence, men and women 
should, as a matter of fairness, be equipped with 
no more ambitions than with the means and time 
to realize. They should be rewarded with the 
feeling of completed tasks, preparatory to quitting. 

If this life is all, instead of being coaxed and 
driven into new attainments, they should be 
equipped with keen desires, and abundantly sup- 
plied with the means for their perfect satisfaction. 

Unless, from what many individuals are now 
doing, a very much larger reward of happiness is 
ultimately to be secured, the present flow of events 
can with little satisfaction be accounted for. 

Why a stupidity so dense, that no better arrange- 
ment among nations has yet been reached, than 
one under the influence of which millions of the 
best young men of each nation become periodically 
slaughtered? Why the existence oi an economic 
system within national lines, enforcing idle money, 
idle hands, idle machinery and idle acres — more 
acres than could be used, were they accessible to 
thousands in want, and many dying of hunger? 

Think of this, and then imagine, if you can, that 

30 "" 



men realize what they are doing; wonder how long 
their stupendous foolishness of dishonesty and 
slaughter is to continue; wonder if for all this 
work, sacrifice and suffering, no more is to be 
gained for the individual than this life, and a sys- 
tem of economic fairness for future generations; 
wonder if all those engaged in the building are to 
pass on unrecompensed. 

If human personality ends with physical death, 
creation is a structure of injustice. For with but 
this present life, justice to man would demand that 
he be sent into this life with far more intelligence 
and honesty than he now has, in fact, that he be 
equipped with the means and a precise knowledge 
of what to do to obtain the greatest amount of 
happiness, with no desire for more life. 

In a one-life experience of justice there could 
be no mistakes, no disasters, no sickness, no pov- 
erty; for there would be no fairness in dra^ic 
experiences given to teach the individual that which 
he could never use and enjoy. 

It seems rational to suppose that if this life is 
all, man would have arrived equipped with a phys- 
ical organism he could not so easily destroy; so 
equipped mentally and emotionally as to receive 
therethrough the highest enjoyment, for further 
lessons would be unnecessary. 

31 



Effort in such a life would be a pleasure, since 
it would be made for the enjoyment of its imme- 
diate fruits ; climatic and economic conditions would 
be perfect; there would be neither compulsory ac- 
tion nor degeneracy in inaction; labor would be 
delightful action, or wholly unnecessary. There 
would be no sickness, and existence would be ideal, 
for there would be no desire for further life, and 
all would depart this life satisfied and smiling, for 
it would be a thing felt to be completed. 

Man, on the contrary, appears impulsed and en- 
vironed to strive and gain wisdom; for wisdom, 
when gained, is the one thing which enhances the 
enjoyment value of all his other possessions. Wis- 
dom gives access to the means to gain the use and 
enjoyment of more of itself j in that it shows how 
to obtain the use and enjoyment of more of all 
other things — even of money, which most persons 
believe to be the one thing in the world worth 
striving to gain, but which, when used unwisely, 
often brings more trouble than does poverty. 

Moral conduct, reliability and happiness do not 
precede, but follow the gain of wisdom. 

The ballot is of value only so far as men have 
learned its wise and honest use. Hence it is of 
comparatively little value today. 

A gain of wisdom, then, appears to be the cen- 

32 



tral purpose of the lure and drive of life. For 
in the proportion that wisdom is gained, has the 
way been opened to the comfortable acquisition of 
all other desirable things, including the happiness 
to which all these other things contribute as an 
ultimate aim; but to little pupose, so far as most 
individuals are concerned, if this life is all. Jus- 
tice, in the interest of happiness, comes into the 
general practice of a community, in proportion to 
its gain in average of wisdom. 

Each individual is brought into life in contact 
with countless numbers of unseen opportunities, 
and is left to awaken to their existence by strug- 
gle; to learn to discriminate, to will, to select and 
to build character, by building many other things. 

But after all the trouble of learning and build- 
ing, he derives but little benefit therefrom, in this 
short life. For what purpose, then, the gain? 

To the observing person, there is nothing more 
certain than that all men are being lured and 
driven to improve. A growing dislike of the 
trite, and an increasing desire for the less common, 
appear as repulsion and attraction accompanying 
this growth. There is always enough incentive to 
effort found in each life to make certain of some 
results. 

But there is the evidence in our daily life that 

33 



we are not far on the way; evidence of unawake- 
ness, a lack of high-grade personality. The ma- 
jority yet respond more readily to being driven 
to improve them to being enticed to improve; they 
fail to see far ahead, and fall below the line of 
sufficient will and wisdom to initiate and keep up 
self-betterment in times of prosperity. 

Could ten thousand dollars be placed in the 
hands of every man and woman in the world today, 
tomorrow few reformers could be found, no an- 
archists, few bolshevists. 

A few could be taken out of the reform ranks 
with five dollars, others would require ten dollars, 
but with ten thousand dollars to each man and 
woman, voluntary self -improvement and social re- 
form would practically disappear from the earth, 
until in a few months the majority had, by ex- 
hausting their allotment, become needy and humble. 
But ignorance, making evolving action a necessity, 
would still remain, voluntary impulse would re- 
main, rivalry, jealousy, hatred and vanity would 
manifest, all' of which the independence secured 
would bring out, intensify, and set men to fighting. 

The dark age attitude latent in some minds, can 
be evoked by a very few dollars. The moment the 
man belonging to the great majority feels the least 
independence, he begins to show off; the bully, or 

34 



small man, crops out in his conduct at the first 
opportunity. Not a very small number among us 
with an automobile — were there no penalty at- 
tached — would average running over one person a 
day, and enjoy the experience. 

We are, however, on the way improvingly. Slow- 
ly we are learning to direct our own evolution; 
learning to see the great possibilities the pursuit of 
knowledge places in the hands of awakening man, 
though as yet he is moved up the ladder of life 
chiefly by being driven. 

If personal unfoldment can be personally con- 
ducted, my neighbor awakened to the fact, may be 
gaining more personality in this one life by con- 
sciousj deliberate efforts to improve, than I, without 
such effort, can gain in many, though I may not 
be in the least aware that my neighbor is gaining 
more than myself. 

Personality, however, in process of evolution, ap- 
pears to protect itself from destruction at the hands 
of others, with its own conceit, while being driven 
upward, unconscious of the real motive of life's 
pursuit. 

How rapidly, then, while crossing the present 
stage of improvement, over which eighty per cent 
of the human family are being slave-driven, 
can human surroundings safely improve to meet 

35 



the requirements of personal unfoldment, how 
rapidly change for the better and still retain com- 
munity equilibrium ? 

Has the time come, when in the interest of safe 
progress, the majority can be entrusted with the 
appropriation and use of the abundance of means 
by which they are surrounded? 

At the present low stage of self-control, appre- 
ciative understanding of the art of thrift, the sci- 
ence and philosophy of use, would not any race 
now in existence if equipped with such abundance, 
deteriorate, rather than improve? Would not such 
comfortableness as this abundance would afford, 
act upon the average mind of today much like a 
hot climate? Evidently we are now deprived of 
what we would have, had we learned to meet the 
requirements of possession, and some day will have 
by having learned to meet them. 

The right to see and to have has a price, in the 
nature of mental growth. 

Opportunities, at this brutal stage, appear to be 
for the few who can see them and seize them, and 
not for the many kept blind by their own self- 
indulgence, indifference, laziness and dishonesty. 

That the price of possession or the purchase price 
of what we desire is knowledge, we are long in 
learning. 

36 



It is the earning and appreciative conserving of 
the things of this life that entitles the individual 
to their comfortable use, not merely the being born 
among them; and it is the idea-forming capacity 
which plans the great ways of production, and 
guides hands and feet into ways of specific earn- 
ings. Were the pioneer organizers, planners of 
great enterprises of production — men who see and 
do things in large ways — to at once turn the bene- 
fits of their plans over to the many, the many 
would never learn the plans, never learn to use 
them appropriately, and appreciatively, or to plan 
for themselves. 

To reach through the opening consciousness, then, 
a viewpoint from which the natural requirement 
of possession and use can be seen to be a gain of 
knowledge, appears to be a matter of the greatest 
importance; and largely by being driven, we are 
learning and moving toward the time of reaching. 

Intelligence expands through group experience, 
as well as through individual experience. Group 
rivalry, national, political and social, serves as a 
spur to action; serves also to correct moves, and 
to preserve sufficient balance of power to insure 
stable growth, improving change or evolutionary 
unfoldment. 

This rivalry protection is indispensable to the 

37 



move. For could there arise at the present stage 
of human arrival, a party, religious organization, 
nation or individual, equipped with the povi^er to 
dominate the world — a happening against which 
progress has always been and still is fighting — it 
would, with its belief in itself, and consequent bul- 
lying ignorance, wreck present civilization, and set 
back progress for many generations. 

This conflict in motion between and among 
groups of men, between the organization and the 
units of the group, also between nations, is serving 
a very important function as a moving and cor- 
recting spur, in the interest of their mutual im- 
provement. Only to the extent that in the process 
of growth dead forms and waste matter cause in- 
convenience and suffering, can they be discarded, 
and in the discard, awaken men sufficiently to es- 
tablish a voluntary process, in the form of a more 
scientific system of educational change, with the 
art of its application. 

Since few men have yet learned to far initiate 
their own awakening and freedom, for some time 
in the future, unscrupulous men will be needed for 
this purpose; needed to arouse and inform slug- 
gish and unthinking men, by inflicting upon them 
the injustices which make them suffer. 

Though the self-destruction of ignorance and 

38 



of injustice is established in the unfolding law of 
life, it works slowly through its involuntary stage. 

Few yet learn faster than their ignorance brings 
them inconvenience; few see and remove the ob- 
stacles from the pathway of life, until hurt by 
them. The great ideas that move the world of 
men and women are fished from the deeps, and set 
in motion by the few. Hands and feet are moved 
to act productively by brains. The idea is the 
subject matter of consciousness and feeling, and 
these, in turn, determine the capacity to enjoy or 
to suffer. 

The sphere of man's knowledge is determined by 
ideas, and is that within which his will may be 
trained to assist selective control, and to initiate 
successful action, with ever greater freedom. Out- 
side this sphere, though the will may act freely, 
its product is uncertain, for it has no guidance. 

A definite knowledge of what to do and how to 
do, must precede and accompany the successful do- 
ing. Though each discovery, each invention, is 
made by the pursuit of an idea, so slow is the move, 
in some cases, that in arresting attention and find- 
ing the way into the consciousness, the feelings and 
the practical affairs of men, years, generations and 
sometimes centuries are consumed by the process. 

However, awakening appears through the action 

39 



of a process which may be controlled and hastened. 
A habit of seeking educational experience for this 
purpose needs to be formed, controlled in action 
while achieving its ends, and abandoned as an ex- 
perience when it has no more to give, and tends 
to become a mere habit of action. In fact, rapid 
progress means a growing dynamic power of habit- 
forming and using; a growing power also to break 
up static conditions, a power to abandon any given 
habit when it ceases to respond progressively. 

In books are now stored the ideas which are to 
determine the future conduct of men, for a long 
time to come. 

In our very large educational experience, we 
are far from being sufficiently unfolded and awak- 
ened to select for ourselves, a long way from hav- 
ing reached the proper degree of right feeling to 
insure honesty. 

Nature, or the law of life, therefore, in select- 
ing the means to serve this larger awakening, puts 
us through a tremendous training school. As in- 
dividuals we are impulsed by a desire to escape 
experiences of discomfort and suffering. 

Leaders of men serve by coercing the led. If 
successful, they cannot serve very far beyond the 
the average intelligence and honesty of their con- 
stituents, and give the best they know, for by their 

40 



direction the masses must yet be given a certain 
amount of awakening inconvenience. Hence there 
is always a fight on between governments and in- 
dividuals; the one acting arbitrarily and tyran- 
nically, and the other ignorantly and rebelliously, 
each correcting and improving the other. 

While the race is crossing the stage of blind 
unreliability, this involuntary, undemocratic, bully- 
infected stage of its unfoldment, it can endure 
much suffering, much tyranny, and enjoy an im- 
mense amount of flattery; for its wisdom is small, 
its feelings not moral, its ideals not high, and its 
conduct of life correspondingly low. 

The process is still one of moving men with 
kicks toward the point where they can be awakened 
with ideas. There are yet among us a few back 
numbers who must be sent to reflect in prison to 
learn better than to rob a henroost. And the foxy, 
criminal seeker of political place will be sent there 
to learn better than to betray his trust, when men 
become but a trifle better informed in political 
economy. 

In proportion to its increase, does knowledge 
enable men to make better use of everything. Ob- 
jects of ambition, as they become wiser, will be less 
offensively sought and less selfishly expressed. At 
what point along the way ambitious and unscru- 

41 



pulous men will be no longer required to awaken 
other and more sluggish men, we are now unable 
to see. 

The world moves successfully forward through 
the leadership of those having a desire to do more 
than the ordinary. The more one can believe that 
the world needs him — depends upon his efforts — 
the more vividly he can imagine that the world 
cannot well do without him; the more he can feel 
that he is ^^IT," the more he can convince himself 
or become convinced by his own desires and by the 
applause of others, that he is Atlas, with the entire 
world resting upon his broad and able shoulders, 
the more he can accomplish, for accomplishment is 
but the form-externalizing action of a psychological 
process. 

The exercise of large ambition needs watching, 
however, for oftener than not it is found without 
moral attachment, so far invading and usurping 
the rights of others as to require checking. 

The world is improving, but there yet remains 
in action a very large percentage of what appears 
to be an early-age tendency, a pre-civilization form 
of ambition, made possible by inheritance, by rever- 
sion of type, and by privilege-conducted education. 
Men of this dark-age, selfish type, equipped with 
a desire to triumph oyer others — to play the part 

42 



of the autocrat and the bully — love to set them- 
selves apart to dictate, to be admired and to bid for 
the applause of the indiscriminating many. And 
their leadership explains the governments, the po- 
litical parties and the churches, which, if allowed 
to do so, would so far dominate the minds of men, 
as to roast all at the stake who dare dissent from 
privilege-established programs, and with their 
bullying ignorance would throttle progress. 

We are today experiencing a reaction against 
freedom of speech and democracy, a current setting 
strongly in the direction of the dark ages. 

And individuals of this tyrannical type are not 
confined to leaders of men. They are found 
wherever ignorance, the cause, is found ; even among 
school-drilled men, but never among the truly en- 
lightened, who have risen above much of the fool- 
ishness of which the ignorant become guilty. 

In nine case^ out of ten, the man of little intel- 
ligence will act the part of the bully with his first 
opportunity, feel independent and begin showing 
off with his first thousand dollars, act arrogantly 
and tyrannically, if ever given a position of author- 
ity, grow envious and jealous at the success of his 
neighbors and relatives, and become wonderfully 
animated with profiteering patriotism in times of 
war, and for some time after, while the tide of 

43 



ignorance and destruction is ebbing. This small- 
ness of ignorance is often exhibited, even in high 
places of trust. 

Hence the need of vigilance, for in the interest 
of human progress and happiness, the influence of 
this type needs to be eliminated as rapidly as pos- 
sible. The future has in store a time when the 
ideals of men, elevated with enlightenment, will 
lead them to act from higher motives, a time when 
through the ambition to give honest service, they 
will become progressive factors of tremendous pow- 
er, and be appreciated. 

The time is not yet, however, for though the 
ideals are ready,w^w are not ready, in that the best 
of ideals have not been sufficiently well taught in 
either the home or the school, to become active in 
the minds of men. 

Until such time, then, as educational interest 
in these ideals has awakened, the masses are to be 
used and taught by back-number bullying men and 
institutions, in promoting their selfish schemes of 
ambition. 

For some time yet, therefore, men are to be 
cured by the tyranny they, with the opportunity, 
would inflict upon others, by the tyranny of others 
inflicted upon themselves. 

Since few can see the meaning of struggle, and 

44 



the possibilities of educational improvement, no 
race, nation or community, and few . individuals, 
can now improve much without being made to suf- 
fer. 

Speaking from the ideal, what leaders of men 
owe to their constituency for the opportunity to 
gratify their ambitions is honest service; yet it is 
most frequently used as a private possession, and for 
selfish, grafting ends. Few in public place are great- 
ly moved by a desire to serve well, few are satisfied 
with applause, their salary and personal improve- 
m.ent, but either seek to obtain the private monopoly 
of the natural opportunities of millions of other 
men, or to betray and cash in to the highest bidder, 
the function of service with which they are en- 
trusted. 

The correction of all this must appear slowly, 
as a matter of unfoldment. Before present knowl- 
edge, everij can be practiced, the result of which 
would be reliability of conduct, the majority must 
have passed through sufficient of the suffering due 
to ur^'reliability to reach honesty, democracy of 
feeling, or enough to kill out the snob, the greed 
and the vanity in themselves. 

Again, by inconvenience men are driven to learn, 
and by still more inconvenience, to practice what 
they learn. The spur of inconvenience will cease 

45 



t'^ be needed as fast as we learn to perform in an- 
ticipation. 

Great benefits are ultimately to come to the 
world from the freedom offered by democratic forms 
of government, but only so fast as the world is 
driven by suffering to perform democratically. 

That to the use of other forms of power is at- 
tached a responsibility in proportion to the power, 
in that use and honest use are naturally required 
i\\ the hands of its possessors, is altogether too little 
realized and heeded by individuals, by communi- 
ties or by nations. 

For instance, a correct knowledge of political 
economy is known to the world, but due to the 
fears and influence of those who hold special privi- 
leges, it- is as yet kept out of both politics and edu- 
cation, the penalty for which is our present dis- 
turbed condition of the world, a condition which 
may yet lead to a world revolution. 

In its evolution, therefore, the human family is 
now crossing a stage of great disturbance and un- 
controlled action; suffering to learn, and suffering 
again to learn to honestly practice what it learns. 

As fast as life in its larger sense of meaning can 
be glimpsed, ignorance gives' way to knowledge, 
dishonesty to honesty, injustice to justice, jealousy 

46 



to mutual helpfulness, animosity to reciprocity, con- 
tempt to appreciation, distrust to confidence. 

The ability to see that all great questions have 
two sides, that life in matter takes the dual form of 
manifestation, tends to make men tolerant, for it 
comes of a process the effects of which helps the 
conservative to see the indispensableness of the lib- 
eral, and the liberal to see the indispensableness of 
the conservative ; it assists in the gradual awakening 
of each individual to the rights of other individ- 
uals, of each side to the truth possessed by the 
other side. Even now, a glimpse of both sides 
has here and there been caught, in consequence of 
which co-operation begins gradually to creep in 
between leaders and led, employer and employed. 

The great belief, also, in superior and inferior, 
the consequence of which is strife, is beginning 
slowly to disappear. 

However, leaders of men in thought and action 
are still necessary, for during these early stages of 
com.munity unfoldment, few are equipped with 
much initiative knowledge. Men, in common with 
other animals, improve but slowly. By means of 
observation and imitation, gradual awakening ap- 
pears; slowly is self-reliance, the power to infer, 
to rationate, to generalize, to organize and to 
moralize, reached. 

47 



And is it not because, with the many, these later 
mental equipments are in process of unfoldment 
merely — largely in the coming — because they de- 
pend too exclusively upon authorities and pictures, 
and must have, though often misled by them, lead- 
ers to follow, to look up to and to imitate. 

Hence the observing person can see that the 
present life is an intermingling of every stage, plane 
or mountain range of individual growth; use any 
set of tangible figures you prefer to represent the 
intangible unfoldment of the personality, the souls 
or minds of men. 

Account for it as we will, there are comparative- 
ly few among us who have finished crossing the 
plane of imitation, and thrown away the crutches 
used in the crossing. The majority are clinging 
to something, made up largely of glamour and pre- 
tense — a church, club, society, lawyer, doctor — they 
are dominated and taught by authorities, while at 
the same time being repeatedly disappointed by 
them. The less we know, the less self-reliant we 
are, the more do we look for from others, and the 
more do our teachers disappoint us. This form of 
disappointment throws us back upon our own re- 
sources. 

So there comes a time — as a rule this is but grad- 
ual, and through countless disappointments — when 

48 



the awakening soul becomes detached and rebel- 
lions, hatcheSj throws off its shell or shackles, and 
starts crossing alone the plane of protest, growling, 
fighting and suffering; a plane crossed by a few 
quickly, with education, in a few years or even 
months, for the pathway has been fairly well sur- 
veyed and educationally mapped, by those who have 
gone before us. Yet others consume a lifetime, or 
even, it may be, many lives, in reaching through 
experience alone, the plane of continuous, purpose- 
ful reconstruction, co-operative action and com- 
fortable forward move. 

It seems rational, then, to infer that through the 
discomforts of life, the action we call work, the 
lure of pursuit, and even through suffering, all are 
being driven and enticed across consecutive planes 
of mental life, and over divides to other planes, 
each in its succession a trifle higher. For what, 
then, do men live? 



49 



THE MORAL CONCEPT— ITS 
AWAKENING 

AS may have been inferred while reading pre- 
vious chapters, there are before us, playing a 
part in the affairs of men, two phases of the evolu- 
tionary process: The first is the lower or animal, 
the compulsory, involuntary, unconscious, slave- 
driven phase; the one out of which the second in 
order, the higher, conscious, voluntary, sought-for, 
educational phase has become in part evolved into 
working order. 

The first is a process of slow growth; the second 
a much more rapidly working process from the 
start, and one that can be and is being continu- 
ously enlarged upon and increased in rapidity of 
move. 

Both, however, are natural. But in one life of 
educational evolution, more attainment can be 
achieved than in several lives of the involuntary 
type. This comparatively few realize, in conse- 
quence of which a high grade of voluntary unfold- 
m.ent, purposeful self-cultivation, lies some distance 
in the future, and can be reached only through great 
improvement in the science and in the art of edu- 
cation, brought about by the efforts of the mentally 
and morally awakened few. 

Even the most elementary lessons, men are long 

50 



ill the learning. For ages they have been suffering, 
in consequence of unreliable conduct, but slowly 
coming to see that reliable conduct, if put into prac- 
tice, would bring confidence, and its consequence of 
harmony of action and happiness. And how far, 
during all this time, it has succeeded, is shown by ' 
the present disturbed condition of the world. 

Each species of animal life on this globe has 
been obliged to demonstrate its fitness to survive, 
by sufficient change of habit to meet the require- 
ments of the changes which took place in its sur- 
roundings. A part of this fitness consisted of 
being able to overcome with muscular power rival 
species and rival individuals in the struggle for 
subsistence; but muscular power, applied, evidently, 
with a degree of intelligence greater than that of 
most of the species overcome. 

In other words, the survival-determining factor 
in evolution is mind. Were this not true, the hu- 
man species, with its comparatively weak organism, 
would never have struggled to the top. 

The key, then, to the mystery of evolution is 
found, not in the biological sciences, but in the 
science of psychology. In man it is that which wills, 
thinks, reasons and conducts the process of learn- 
ing ever more intelligently. 

At present, the line by which the mind of man 

51 



is divided from the mind of the highest of the lower 
animals, is very distinctly drawn. The human 
mind is marked by memory, the power to think, 
by conscience, rationality, will power, and regard 
for the rights of others, all of which it has been 
sufficiently susceptible to the lessons of inconve- 
nience to learn. The human phase of evolution 
must have started countless millions of years since. 
There was, evidently, a time when from the lower 
animal life a separation began to take place, a 
time when the line between the two started and 
came gradually to form ; when the mind of the now 
human species in the battle with the muscle of the 
brute, appeared in doubt, followed by a time when 
it began to win, and to come marching rapidly 
up through the ages to a higher plane,^ leaving all 
the other animals behind. Thus, evidently, human 
fitness to survive mentally differentiated from the 
fitness of the brute to survive, and the present place 
of arrival reached — the one of cultivation, or hu- 
man phase of growth by the greater susceptibility 
of the human being to be taught by the memory 
of his experiences. 

But even with educational means, much of the 
brutal fitness to survive which resides in the power 
to overcome, to kill and to take from others, is 
still retained in the practices of the human life 

52 



through the belief that it is a naturally constituted 
part of the human fitness to survive; and out of 
which belief, men are being but slowly driven by 
the troublesome effects of the conduct thereby 
prompted. 

But slowly the realization is reached, that fitness 
to survive has appeared through the gradual discard 
of the animal fitness to survive; that fitness must 
come to be sought; and through higher qualifica- 
tions of survival — that is, through truthfulness, re- 
liability, justice-rendering — a gradually improved 
moral fitness. 

The human life appears to be unfolding in ac- 
cordance with a plan more or less clearly outlined. 
The best to take in next steps can be seen with 
a fair amount of clearness, and the hitches in the 
program appear to come of the fact that men do 
not take these steps as well as they may learn to 
take them. 

That is, the meaning of the correcting element 
in the program, the feeling of discomfort, suf- 
fering, is not yet sufficiently well understood to be 
heeded and practiced. If the naturally estab- 
lished process for improving the conduct of men 
be viewed as one of cruelty, it may be considered 
as cruelly kind, or as kind in action as'it can be, 
and make of man what the plan has in view, a 

53 



something so far better as to be utterly beyond our 
present comprehension. 

Much of the change destined to take place in 
the life and mind of the child, as life goes on,^ is 
well known to his father, who finds him today bit- 
terly crying over his broken toy. 

The evolution of the social organism becomes 
evident to the beginner in the study, but by fur- 
ther investigation and consideration, he is led to 
infer a more remote aim — the unfoldment of hu- 
man personality — in the achievement of which the 
social organism is evolved to serve instrumentally. 

The real aim, then, seems to be the building of 
the present man into a larger man, one having a 
much greater spherical capacity of mind, than has 
anyone we know now as man; an expanse of con- 
sciousness, of knowledge, of sympathy, of relia- 
bility; one having vastly higher ideals, greater 
strength of will, self-control, keener insight and 
appreciation. A personality with the above attain- 
ments, and thereby freed from prejudice and de- 
ceit, raised above intrigue, greed and selfishness, 
working in co-operative harmony with others, 
seems to be on the way, as a more remote aim of 
this unfolding move. 

There are many facts in life contributing their 
testimony in evidence thereof. 

54 



All persons resent unreliability of conduct. This 
resentment in operation in the affairs of men, will 
finally show them that it pays to be honest, to drop 
deceit and injustice. This resentment is also des- 
tined to wipe out all undemocratic, predatory and 
bully-inclined types of men; to do the same thing 
to the same types of institutions and nations. It is 
destined to displace animal fitness to survive with 
human fitness to survive; for a large part of that 
which fits the animal to survive, when practiced 
by man, constitutes his fitness to pass away. 

Special privileges are destroyed by the resent- 
m_ent against their injustice, of holding a resent- 
ment still further intensified by the unjust use of 
the power which they confer. Of old it was ob- 
served: 'IThose whom the gods would destroy 
they first make mad." That in men and things 
which unfits them to survive, is their offensiveness ; 
they destroy themselves with their obnoxiousness, 
in failing to serve honestly, fittingly. 

It may be observed that privileges having the 
longest life, are those made to serve the largest 
amount of common good. 

The vain, unjust, arrogant and tyrannical use 
of any power, creates the opposition to effect its 
removal or destruction. It not only stimulates the 
moves of the wronged ones, who are destined to 

55 



effect the removal, of those who do the wrong, 
but to blind those to be removed. 

Thus, the climax of evolution seems aimed to 
take the moral form. The necessity for destruc- 
tive revolutions in the interest of progress, will 
disappear as fast as the lesson to meet the re- 
quirements of progress with improvement in edu- 
cation and conduct is learned. 



56 



APPRECIATIVE FEELING 

IN viewing life from another angle, the same 
conclusion is reached. Most of what men know 
of right and wrong they appear to have learned 
from experience. The world's present fund of 
knowledge seems to have cumulated more through 
struggle than through deliberate seeking. Right 
moves have been learned by the inconvenience of 
wrong moves. 

Could pathways of wisdom-gaining be retraced, 
they would be found strewn with the wreckage of 
experience, involving loss, sacrifice and suffering. 

Personality, with all its knowledge and emo- 
tional capacity, appears to be the product of suc- 
cessful struggle. 

The struggle for a thing creates a knowledge 
of the thing, the feeling of pleasure that comes 
of earned possession. 

Possession gives satisfaction, in the proportion 
that the struggle to possess has brought with it the 
feeling of appreciative understanding. In other 
words, the effort that brings the things of use, 
brings also appreciative understanding, and capac- 
ity to enjoy — happiness. Life gives the opportunity 
to make the effort. Each accomplishment brings 
with it a recompense in the form of a feeling of 
right to have and to use. 

57 



The enjoyment of music, food, and in fact all 
things of use, can be greatly intensified by deliberate 
efforts to understand and to use with frugal ap- 
preciation, rather than wastefully. Nor are human 
thought and speech any exception to the rule. The 
enjoyment experienced in the satisfaction of the 
animal desires, is the form of feeling through 
which higher forms of enjoyment are reached, 
human happiness evolved. 

But is the degree* of feeling enjoyed by the ani- 
mal understood by the animal, and of sufficient in- 
tensity to be regarded as happiness? 

If ignorance is bliss, the stone evidently is in 
a state of perfected bliss. 

There are apparently many degrees of conscious- 
ness, and some of which the conscious one neither 
understands nor appreciates; a state which cannot 
be considered as one of happiness. The enjoyment 
of our experiences, then, is high in proportion to 
our understanding of what we experience. 

The building of human capacity to enjoy, and 
the liberation of the opportunity to prepare things 
to enjoy, are increasing by the unfolding process of 
effort, largely unconscious, and without being able 
to give much of happiness to the average individual 
in the span of a single life. 

Happiness is the fruit of such effort as may be 

58 



termed right conduct. Not only sowing^ but right 
sowing, must precede the successful reaping and 
enjoyable use of a field of grain. In every depart- 
ment of life, the reaping of a harvest of happiness 
follows as fast as right sowing of conduct is under- 
stood and practiced. 

Living the family life, as games are played, in 
the sense of one trying to win from the other 
without the earning, is the cause of a large percent- 
age of family difficulty. Employers, employees, 
doctors, lawyers, merchants, in their efforts to reap 
more than they sow, produce the same results. 

Reaping the unsown harvest is stealing. Ground 
rent collecting is the reaping of a harvest not sown 
by the reaper. Our land holding, banking, and 
governing systems of all kinds, are guilty of the 
same reaping on a gigantic scale, and are thieving 
systems, the evil results of which are at this moment 
very much in evidence. A little later, labor unions 
are to do the same thing and retaliate. 

These forms of reaping will be no longer in- 
dulged in, when a deeper understanding of cause 
and effect applied to human conduct has been 
reached, that is, when sufficient scope of outlook 
has been gained to enable men to see the harmony 
and happiness-making power of fair dealing. 

Justice produces harmony. Competition among 

59 



small men of today, sets them to quarreling and 
wasting their energy. Among the wise men of 
the future, it will merely stimulate a wholesome 
rivalry, and bring out the best in the participants. 

For there is abundance in the world for all to 
use, but none naturally intended to be held out of 
use by one when needed by another; none can safe- 
ly be used to dominate other persons and direct 
their conduct of life. 

There is a natural law to protect personal 
growth, freedom to act within personal lines, and 
co-operatively with others, beyond personal lines. 
The slow recognition of this law may be observed 
to be evolving in every move of the human life. 
The resentment shown at the invasion of personal 
rights, is the feeling through which moral conduct 
is evolved. This feeling tends also to draw dis- 
tinct lines of personal demarkation, and to drive 
each to attend to his own affairs, or to work with 
others in mutually helpful ways. 

The shirkers of the community bring trouble 
for all; laziness creates resentment, and unfits man 
to survive in his sphere of action, no less than the 
lower animal in its sphere. 

Consequently, the place of the lazy man slowly 
eliminating himself, is being taken by the man who 
learns to like work, the evolving man, the new, the 

60 



later, the higher natural man of honest endeavor, 
better fitted to survive, in the interest of that fair 
play through which alone harmony and happiness 
can be reached. Thus do all other elements of 
discord gradually give way by self-destruction, to 
that which better serves in the interests of har- 
mony; that is, unfitness to survive is largely a 
matter of personal selection, made for the benefit of 
those from among whom the unfitted betakes him- 
self. 

The line of least resistance — easy methods, short 
cuts, shirk-and-get-rid-of-work ways, laziness and 
play, are the old natural; love of work is the new, 
the later evolved and the higher natural. 

Only after long continued pursuit, at the end 
of unintelligent and direct pleasure-seeking, has the 
victim, through the discomfort entailed, learned 
better than to repeat. 

And this is the program of life, through which 
endeavor seems being made to entice and drive all 
onward; into survival and the freedom of ever 
greater wisdom and honesty. And it must destroy 
those with whom it cannot succeed. 

The rule in the pursuit of happiness in this life 
is, to find it in small quantities, and mixed with 
much disappointment, for the reason, evidently, 
that neither the wisdom to find nor the capacity 

61 



to receive is yet large. The price of happiness is 
work well performed; the effort to secure a thing 
cultivates at the same time the capacity to use it 
enjoyably. 

Most of the difficulties of life are due to not 
knowing that which can be learned, and much of 
it easily learned. 

The fact that the majority are still driven to 
improve, and to surpass in material success their 
friends and relatives, by their emotions of envy, 
jealousy and hatred, reveals the degree of human 
progress now reached. The truth is that men have 
not yet learned enough to be ready to receive, nor 
are their surroundings yet prepared to give any 
high degree of happiness. 

The central aims of the move of life appear 
to be a gain of knowledge; a gain which is insured 
by the spur of discontent on the one hand, and on 
the other, by enough enjoyment secured along the 
way to keep us all trying for more, inspired by 
the hope of at some time and place finding much 
greater enjoyment or actual happiness. 

Present achievement is but the foundation of 
the human structure. 

Successive planes of increasing happiness have 
not been reached, nor are they to be reached, over 
avenues of direct happiness-seeking, but through 

62 



the increase of knowledge, wisdom and a growing 
intensity of feeling derived from successfully meet- 
ing the combats of life. In order to enjoy a 
cottage beyond anticipation, it must first be con- 
structed. 

The plan of progress is being gradually under- 
stood, and a better practice instituted to assist the 
move; but so far, the slave-driven form has been 
but little displaced by the educational. 

Most of what we are enjoying today in the way 
of gain as embodied in invention, is due to the 
inconvenience of using poor tools and machines. 
All along down through the ages, poorer things 
of all sorts — and in a particular way does this hold 
true of conduct — have destroyed, or displaced them- 
selves with the better, by making men suffer. 

The automobile is an accumulation of effects — 
the up-to-date of efforts to avoid inconvenience of 
travel piled upon inconvenience, a product of loco- 
motion discomforts, reaching back no man can say 
how far, into the dim ages left behind us. 

Only by its entailed difficulties do men learn to 
avoid errors of way. Hence has arisen the saying: 
"Necessity is the mother of invention.'^ 

All that is known of the science and the art of 
getting well and keeping well, has been learned 
through pain. All the new healing cults: mental, 

63 



psychological, magnetic and medical, though many 
and differing in name, in form of expression and 
application, constitute the up-to-date of knowledge 
gained by the discomfort of sickness. 

This body of knowledge is accessible to those 
only who through some form of personal adversity 
have overtaken the procession, with the selective 
power of will and understanding. 

The good citizen, good neighbor, good husband 
and good father, is one who has, somewhere and 
some time, experienced that suffering through which 
sufficient fellow-feeling has become evolved to ena- 
ble him to successfully take the examination. 

We have much to say of democracy, the world 
has reached a large measure of the democratic in 
book-made theory. But it has not yet suffered 
enough to deserve to enjoy practical democracy by 
having evolved sufficient of the democratic feeling 
to set up the practice. 

The world aspires autocratically, and gives to 
democracy a party meaning, by failing yet to 
comprehend it in its higher sense of ''equal rights 
to all and special privileges to none.^' It is not 
yet willing, because it is not yet intelligently and 
feelingly ready, to give and take simple justice. 

When the world has reached the democratic 
in knowledge^ the feelings will be ready to set up 

64 



the practice of democracy. Then autocratic bul- 
lies, bosses, vampire law makers, with their flunkey 
equipment of expensive pretense in defense of spe- 
cial privileges, such as prisons and armies, will soon 
pass away. In no way other than through the 
evolution of the democratic in understanding and 
feeling, is it possible for men to rise higher in 
practice than a government made by the few and 
for the few. 

There appears to be a reason much larger than 
most reasons given, why a government by the 
people and for the people has not yet been estab- 
lished. It can not be established, so long as the 
majority in each nation hate all other nationalities 
but their own, and are moved to achievement by 
a desire to triumph over and humiliate friends, 
relatives and neighbors, instead of by a happi- 
ness-making desire to act among them in mutually 
helpful ways. 

Is not this quite prevalent belief that the re- 
tention of the **pep'' of life will be removed by the 
discard of human brutality, due to the fact that 
many are yet struggling through the blindness of 
moral childhood? And does not suffering appear 
to be the chief factor in the process of awakening 
in the many the moral sense, thus performing a 

65 



function which experiences of happiness cannot 
perform ? ' 

Consequently, in many cases, a club is at present 
a better instrument of reform than turning the 
other cheek. For in the cases of those who have 
an abundance of cheek to turn, turning the other 
cheek often means sparring for still greater advan- 
tage. 

He who has learned to improve while prospering, 
and while well to so live as to keep well, has reached 
the stage in his unfoldment, of the few, but the 
place toward which all are moving, and from 
whence all are destined to learn and move rapidly 
forward, without being kicked and made to greatly 
suffer. 

Today, however, it cannot be denied that to the 
extent of their gain of that which gives the oppor- 
tunity to enjoy without effort, do the majority 
proceed to seek the pleasures of sense, fail to learn, 
become lazy, and begin straightway to degenerate. 

If any short cut to permanent happiness has 
been found, any elixir of life compounded, and 
easily-applied way to happiness discovered, it is 
a? yet but little in evidence. 

The belief in short cuts, however, found in near- 
ly all the more modern creeds and cults, may be 
explained by recognizing it as the lure of hope, the 

66 



beckoning hand of dreams, the call of human ideals 
for the far away, a call which keeps men in pur- 
suit, in the belief that the end of the journey, 
though far distant, is near at hand. 

However, the realization of present ideals can 
be hastened by effort. Goals can be much more 
rapidly reached by more work and less of being 
driven. They are to be reached by innumerable 
failures along the way. 

To one having had the opportunity to observe 
great variety of human conduct, great facilities to 
meet types of the best minds in books; one with 
the ability also to reason his way back to the causes 
of the effects by which he is surrounded ; each cult 
appears to be made up of individuals, kindred in 
type, grouped around some ideal fitted to serve, 
in a general way, both the sympathetic and com- 
petitive needs of each individual of the group, while 
at the same time serving as a rival group to assist 
the evolution of other groups, the ideals of which, 
in some cases, cannot, of course, be of a very h?gh 
order. 

From this viewpoint, then, modern cults, with 
their perpetual-youth beliefs, their elixirs; with 
their beneficent helpfulness ; can be the more readily 
understood. There cannot be found one among 
them which is not believed by its votaries to be 

67 



the only way; and each has in proof of its power, 
its correctness and its divine intrenchment, a sup- 
ply of short cuts, in the form of genuine miracu- 
lous cures, to present : as Christian Science, New 
Thought, Christian Healing, healing by prayer, by 
will and the direction of invisible teachers. 

For this attitude of mind there is a very good ex- 
planation ; found in the unfolding law of life, which 
responds encouragingly to all constructive human 
effort, and gives rise to further effort. 

The way of short cut, therefore, to perpetual 
youth, to happiness and wisdom-gaining, which 
certain cults belive they have already reached — as 
shown by their smug belief in the completeness of 
their own particular elixir, combined with their 
sweet-smiling contempt of all others, is an ideal 
which is being but slowly reached in the realization. 
It takes time. At intervals along the way we find 
their members suffering the pangs of disillusion, 
stumbling and learning new lessons. 

Their attitude can be better understood, per- 
haps, by recognizing the wave motion of progress; 
that the crest of each wave terminates at a point 
a trifle higher than its successor ; that at nodal points 
of time and growth, bud, blossom and fruit may 
suddenly appear in the form of a general mental 
awakening or expanse of consciousness, and the 

68 



birth of many new cults, all of which may be ra- 
tionally conceived to have arrived, not miraculous- 
ly, but in response to the faithful evolutionary work 
of years, or even of centuries. So can the same 
thing be seen to hold true of the individual. May 
not what is now called cosmic consciousness be 
viewed as the bloom and the fruiting of age-long 
evolution ? 

May not the present cult-hatching be viewed as 
the result of a process long in action, of a long 
time brooding under the turbulent breast of the 
ages, instead of having arrived through the discov- 
ery of short roads to perpetual youth, over which 
its votaries believe it to have arrived? And is not 
the present bloom and fruitage to pass through 
another, and still another brooding and hatching, 
on to a nodal point in time, somewhat higher in 
position than the present? 

And is not this belief in being able to easily 
find short ways and elixirs, one among the soothing 
delusions that keep us moving on over the long 
way? This destroyed in men and women, were 
they able to see the work, the trouble and the 
length of time necessary to find, to survey, to guide 
and pave short ways, would they not lie down to rise 
no more? For is the average adult of today, in his 

69 



ability to conceive time past or future, more than 
a child a trifle larger grown? 

It takes time. How often do we finish up any 
undertaking sooner than we expected? Are we 
not led forward by our belief in easy accomplish- 
ments ? Usually we get through in two hours what 
we hoped at the start to accomplish in one, in from 
two to ten years our projects for a year, and to 
finish up what we have planned for one lifetime, 
w^ould take many lives. 

To make a fortune and find time to enjoy it, 
is confidently looked forward to by the young man. 
The first is seldom accomplished, and the second 
much more readily. This lure and drive of life, 
apparent everywhere to the observing and the 
thinking, is, when recognized and expressed, always 
taken by the adolescent mind as a pessimistic view. 

This short-cut belief in the minds of most men, 
lures them onward, and may it not also be con- 
ceived to be a prophecy of greater realization stored 
in future ages than we are now able to dream, but 
achieved with many disappointing delays along the 
way? 

To be able to realize that an indispensable re- 
quirement of successful moves is the careful prep- 
aration that takes time, is to be rid of many illu- 
sions, to avoid many disappointments, to move 

70 



more evenly and comfortably forward, and to ac- 
complish more by meeting the problems of life 
with the optimism of knowledge, rather than with 
that of a blind belief or faith. 

The greater motive power of the human life, lies 
as yet, beyond human consciousness. Consequently, 
much of the bad in human conduct is not purposely 
so. Acts of error and of evil design are, as a rule, 
mistakes made through ignorance. The better 
things to do lie beyond knowledge, and therefore 
beyond selection. 

Suffering is an effect, back of which, to produce, 
a cause has been at work, and so it is with happi- 
ness. 

In proportion to one's power of will and knowl- 
edge of the cause of unhappiness, can unhappiness 
be avoided, prevented from appearing or removed, 
and happiness made to appear and remain. 

In this little volume the suffering of life has been 
recognized, that its cause, ignorance, might also 
be shown, with the end in view of its removal. 
It is largely a plea for education. 

In order to bring happiness, suffering would 
not be necessary, were human beings wise enough 
to do that which would secure to themselves happi- 
ness without suffering, and to the extent that they 
do this, do they cease to suffer. Though suffering 

71 



is a fact, and appears to be a necessity, we are 
not here prescribing suffering, but that which suf- 
fering itself prescribes — wisdom, a gain of knowl- 
edge; for, to the extent that knowledge appears, 
suffering retires. 

The discomfort of the wrong move tends to 
awaken men to the fact that large enjoyment re- 
quires large knowledge; that knowledge brings 
with it capacity to enjoy; that happiness cannot 
lead the capacity-building move, but must follow 
as a consequence. 

The happiness secured along the toilsome way, 
appears in bits, as if to encourage the belief that 
greater wisdom and happiness can be secured. 

The facts of life make it appear that we are 
moving toward something not yet in view; a cu- 
mulation of results which lie beyond the horizon of 
this lifers consciousness. 

Many are found doing that in life which they 
cannot rationally explain; a few appear to enjoy 
the overcoming of great difficulties, and take upon 
themselves experiences of great discomfort, instead 
cf the opposite, which they might easily have. The 
move of the human life appears to be one to gain 
knowledge and power of will. So far do a small 
number renounce happiness to gain knowledge, as 
to take away the ordinary pleasures of life. And 

72 



if not in the interest of knowledge-gaining, for 
what? Why do a few sacrifice their lives to what 
they feel to be their particular duty? 

In cases where voluntary effort to learn is not 
exercised, compulsion steps in to initiate the move. 
Whether rich or poor, successful or unsuccessful, 
no one can do precisely what he prefers ; no circum- 
stance in life can be found in which educational 
experience can be avoided, no circumstance where 
action, much of which is unpleasant, can be escaped. 

How much of this experience is selected, how 
much imposed ? Are we not moved, in our conduct 
of life, by a proclivity which lies largely beyond 
both will and intelligence, by a tendency set up 
in the original or cosmic plan of life that compels 
us to act in certain ways, while we gradually gain 
sufficient strength of will and intelligence to act 
as conscious individuals, voluntarily? And for what, 
if not to gain independence of action and a product 
of personality to be used beyond the border line of 
this life, since but little of either gain can be used 
on this side? 

Is it not very evident that there has been and 
still is a law established by an intelligence operating 
through human conduct, much larger than human 
intelligence personally directed? 

If this life was purposed to give human happi- 

73 



ness, it has certainly missed the mark. If but this 
one term of personal existence was the creative 
intent, the human being should have been different- 
ly equipped, differently constituted and impulsed, 
differently environed, as set forth elsewhere in this 
essay. 

If the creative intent was to give happiness in 
this life, men should have been sent fully supplied 
with wisdom, with mutual understanding, with the 
ready-made feeling of appreciation and honesty, 
with plenty to eat, plenty to wear, and in other 
ways to enjoy, instead of being obliged to work for 
this equipment, only to be deprived, in many cases, 
of the use and enjoyment when gained. 

Why does a warm climate fail to produce a hardy 
and vigorous race, except that it fails to impose 
the obligation to work, the necessary discipline of 
life ? Why do hard knocks produce men best worth 
while, except that they are disciplinary, that they 
furnish something to overcome; compel the neces- 
sary educational action? Why do men fight to 
gain things of so little worth, and that can be used 
for so short a time if gained? 

All the facts of life seem to contradict the belief 
that among the first purposes of this life is the one 
to give individual happiness. We are in pursuit 
of ideals, but were the leading purpose of this life 

74 



the one to give happiness, we need not and would 
not waste time in pursuit of ideals, we would know 
all we need to know. 

The pursuit of ideals, however, is a fact, and a 
significant one, even though in the pursuit, prac- 
tically speaking, few have succeeded in capturing a 
high grade. Either directly or indirectly, we are 
all in pursuit of ideal happiness, without ever being 
able to secure the direct object of our pursuit. The 
pursuit does not appear prepared to bring much 
immediate happiness, but a happiness more remote 
and greater, secured through a commensurate im- 
provement in appurtenance, and gain of capacity to 
enjoy. 

The surroundings of this life are far from ideal, 
yet judging from that which is plentifully in evi- 
dence all around us, no one knows enough, appre- 
dates enough, has enough right feeling to enjoy, 
in any high degree, the gifts of life and the con- 
quests of work already secured. 

The life of the individual is not long enough to 
build much, or to open consciousness to a very high 
grade of controlled appreciative enjoyment. 

The human being of today seems merely the 
basement of a grand structure yet to appear, the 
good start of a building far transcending any yet 
conceived. And the rational inference is that in 

75^ 



the dim distance there looms a pair of revised hu- 
man beings, a man and a woman possessed of power 
to do and capacity to enjoy, impossible for even 
the best among us to now clearly outline, and they 
have not yet appeared in the dreams of the majority. 

To the importance of building this larger pair, 
through a more intensive educational effort, mor- 
ally pursued, a few have begun to awaken. But at 
the present rate of structural speed — the rate pur- 
sued by the majority — how much can be accom- 
plished in a century? 

Can the best human ideals of today be reached 
by these in one, two, three, or even a hundred 
lives like the one through which the majority of 
men and women are now being driven and led? 
Justice to these, then, must give them time to live, 
to fight, to lie, to betray, to steal, and to suffer 
the consequences of all this foolishness, in the in- 
terest of their awakening to take control of their 
own living. 

Since a one-life theory explains satisfactorily but 
few of the facts of life, while a theory of continu- 
ous personality explains nearly all the facts, the 
latter is by far the more rational of the two. 

Why, on reaching a certain stage of unfoldment, 
do men and women awaken with a tremendous de- 
sire to learn? Why, upon awakening, do they feel 

76 



such a keen sense of regret at the waste of time 
previous to their awakening? Why do many strive 
so fiercely for attainments that can have no possible 
use in this life, and then gradually cease to be in- 
terested in these attainments when reached, unless 
the results have been stored as personality? 

Why desire and find so much need for change; 
why are we all driven by suffering to break habits; 
why unable to find a resting place? Is not life a 
school, rather than a pleasure excursion? Are we 
not being awakened by the tuition of conflict, and 
graduated from grade to grade? 

If not, why so many adults struggling through 
the first reader of practical life, why so much waste 
of time in quarreling over trivial matters, why the 
failure to arrive educationally at mutual under- 
standing, in the interest of happiness? If this life 
begins and ends human personality, why the Great 
War, a conflict allowed to be prepared and set in 
motion by a few of the most unscrupulous and 
ignorantly ambitious among men, at a time when a 
very large percentage of the world in both intel- 
ligence and feeling, appear to be evolved beyond 
such barbarism? 

Does there not appear therein an effort to teach 
men to progress without such conflict; an effort to 
teach the world to educationally eliminate its un- 

77 



fitted to survive, to teach it the importance of dis- 
carding its atavistic types, to leave out of active 
history its historic left-overs, to displace the bar- 
baric concept of civilization with ideals of a grade 
so high that war may cease to appear to be a thing 
of glory? 

To such as live in unfoldment on the war plane, 
the pomposity of war fiends, and vampires in human 
form, makes them seem desirable personages. 

There is established in the unfolding law a 
slow move which eliminates the no longer fitted to 
serve, in the interest of wisdom and happiness- 
giving; a move to destroy warfare, injustice, tyr- 
anny and falsehood, or to make them destroy them- 
selves, together with their authors. This move can 
be hastened. 

Most leaders in these stupendous dramas of in- 
justice, serve in the belief that the world needs 
what they try to impose upon it; and they serve as 
blindly and as instrumentally, apparently, as the 
steam engine, without, as a rule, for a moment 
realizing that it means the destruction of them- 
selves and what they stand for. 

In evidence, note the assumed dignity of their 
conduct, the absurd pomposity, the patronizing man- 
ner toward their mental and moral superiors, all 
making up a body of cohduct to provoke not the 

78 



smiles of the gods alone, but of all thinking men 
and women who behold in this the doom of an old 
order. 

The observing person feels obliged to interpret 
a large percentage of what he observes in our every 
day life as made up of the mental action of this 
same antique type, due to a middle-age residue 
of men having full-grown dignified beards, but 
equipped with adolescent minds; and at this stage 
cf growth, no longer needed by others, except as a 
nuisance, made useful as a spur to action. 

Hence, in the interest of social welfare, the work- 
ing of the law may be observed in their self-elimina- 
tion as rapidly as they finish their spur work. 

But if they are evolving personalities, as they 
appear to be, should they not have other lives and 
opportunities to improve, to become actual men? 

Human beings seem to be moving toward a larger 
and happier life, consequently the central aim to 
be looked for in progress is the moral aim, the 
evidence of which appears everywhere in the move. 

All instrumentalities of human injustice, as above 
mentioned, all monopolistic institutions and bully- 
ing tendencies are self-destructive. But why are 
men so constituted that this destructive process 
makes them suffer, unless it is educating to larger 
ends than this life, as well as eliminating? 



Why do they not enjoy war, the slaughter of 
their sons, the destruction of their property, unless 
the suffering part of the program is doing some- 
thing, which so far along the unfolding way, en- 
joyment has never accomplished, and cannot now 
accomplish? Happiness, like all other things of life, 
appears to be meted out to men and women but 
little faster than they learn to use it wisely. Why? 
In the compulsory learning there may be no purpose, 
but its effect gives it all the appearance of purpose; 
it serves to make men think and know, serves to 
strengthen wills, and particularly to make them 
feel, or more largely conscious. 

Great eliminating periods, epochal upheavals, 
break in upon the world from beyond the human 
ken, but soon after being over, somewhat higher 
ideals are found in action, a little more knowledge 
and honesty in practice, a little higher grade of feel- 
ing and happiness, combined with a somewhat 
greater strength of will, and a dawning conscious- 
ness that the great destruction and suffering of the 
epochal change could not only have been avoided, 
but, by educational means, far more than such up- 
heavals ever accomplish could have been secured 
for less than half the expense. 

Whether or not, then, struggle, discomfort and 
suffering were established in the program of life 

80 



to carve out ever larger human personalities — beings 
with greater expanse of consciousness and ever 
greater freedom in the action of the will, initiative 
and creative power — this is what it appears to be 
engaged in doing. It is the work in which the so- 
cial organism now appears to be instrumentally 
engaged. 

All group improvement seems to be moving to- 
wards ends larger than single human life service, 
for in all these great upheavals, many apparently 
innocent parties are sacrificed to gain for others 
something for which they pay nothing; as the sacri- 
fice of one generation for the next, and no more 
worthy, than the one sacrificed. 

Are the young men who fall in these battles not 
to have another opportunity of life in which to com- 
pensate them for the sacrifice which they are driven 
by ignorant men to make in this life? If not, there 
appears no good reason for believing in compensa- 
tion; that justice is any part of the plan to give; 
that life is anything but fatuous. 

So we are once more led to inquire if there is 
evidence of any directing mind back of these de- 
structive upheavals, if they are human-made, or 
appear by the action of a cosmic and educational 
law? And in this inquiry do we not discern a 
beneficent law of growth, acting through uncon- 

81 



scious human instrumentalities, and in the interest 
of their enlarging capacity and continuous sur- 
vival ? 

Could the human race step into a society gov- 
erned by the best ideals of today, what would it 
do with the occupancy? Would it not act much 
like a **pig in a parlor"? In other words, would 
it not in such a society, raise sufficient hell to fit 
it to its own educational needs? 

For many reasons, this life fails to satisfy me. 
I feel that I am slowly improving, but that there 
is not yet enough of me to satisfactorily and legiti- 
mately commmand either myself or my surround- 
ings. 

I see myself here learning rather than enjoying; 
and out in the distance, as a dimly outlined some- 
thing, larger and better. 

The master-man cannot be a mere figment of 
the imagination. He must be a realizable ideal, a 
possibility, which when realized, will be able to act 
within his own sphere of right, in harmonious as- 
sociation with others of his kind, each acting with- 
out conflict of function. 

We are all imprisoned by a limited" conscious- 
ness. The tremendousness of time needed to effect 
miracles of progressive change, we fail to grasp. 
Nature's aims, and her resources to achieve her 

82 



ends are concepts which lie beyond the human 
vision. There appears to be in process of forma- 
tion, however, a larger being through human un- 
foldment. 

Having caught in the move a larger aim, life 
appears in pursuit of some tremendous accomplish- 
ment; to be at work on a plan far too ambitious to 
either culminate or to be understood in this life. 

When contrasted with our ideal man, most per- 
sons appear to be struggling through a mental ado- 
lescence; not a small number seem to be wading in 
the mud of mental childhood, at play with their 
little red mental wagons in the midst of mighty 
things to do. 

No high degree of enjoyment has as yet been 
gained in the social life, the home life, the sex life 
or the business life, consequent upon the lack of 
the keenness of feeling and vision, which the wis- 
dom of more experience must bring. Comparative- 
ly few appear able to glimpse any mighty purpose, 
and stupendous plan in process of carving out future 
human happiness. 



83 



MUST NOT HAPPINESS BE EARNED? 

THE plan does not appear to be one to secure 
to the human being much happiness in this life 
for in order to do so, it would have been neces- 
sary to create him with a definite capacity to enjoy 
— with certain desires — and to have equipped his 
surroundings with the means to fully satisfy these 
desires, without the painful struggle on his part 
to obtain them. 

The plan appears to be to give happiness in 
this life only so far as earned, the only way ap- 
parently to build a freely-acting personality. In 
other words, the best way, and perhaps the only 
way, to raise man above automatic animal action, 
is to put him through a process which drives him 
and coaxes him to raise himself. 

Hence, in the establishment of the feeling of 
inconvenience, and in stubborn cases, the feeling 
even of suffering, is found the corrrection of erro- 
neous moves and wrong conduct, a suffering which 
the rational person of today refuses to view as a 
creator's punishment. Even in cases where suf- 
fering follows acts knowingly wrong, we cannot 
view it as punishment in the sense of human un- 
derstanding. For how can it be necessary for the 
power through which this universe came into ex- 

84 



istence to punish its own creation as a correction 
for its own mistakes? 

Are we not growing larger ? Are not the combats 
of life pioneering the upward way, and the hurts 
serving as a spur to that corrective action which 
is a necessity of growth? Must not this be so, for 
are we not yet too small in understanding to per- 
sonally manage the moving facts of life to the end 
of growth, combined with a happiness having much 
value ? 

We are small of calibre. The majority still 
resent being tied to a task, and yet, by making 
good at one's tasks, is about the only way men learn. 
Birth introduces us to a task, to which fitness to 
survive ties us. The American Indian refused to 
be tied to a task, and lost his inheritance. 

The quest of happiness is a universal pursuit, 
but the getting is slow of process, because we have 
not as yet well learned the way. The gain of 
happiness follows the gain of capacity to enjoy; that 
is, happiness follows the gain of knowledge, through 
which greater strength and freedom of will is 
gained, more reliability, increased intensity of feel- 
ing and power to execute. We enjoy most that 
which we appreciate most, because it is that about 
which we know most. 

To the extent of one's gain of general knowl- 

85 



edge, including science, philosophy, mathematics, 
psychology, music, economics, ethics and other fields 
of knowledge, has he enlarged his consciousness and 
increased his capacity to enjoy. 

Happiness may be conceived to be a harmonious 
state of mental action within the individual field 
of knowledge, an action that cannot be beyond 
consciousness. 

To enjoy beyond our knowledge is impossible. 
Knowledge must precede enjoyment. The greater 
the knowledge, the greater the enjoyment. For 
capacity to enjoy is co-extensive with knowledge 
of the enjoyable. 

The known limit of human capacity makes it 
appear probable that there are many things better 
worth knowing, than the things we think of most 
value. Human evolution can be expressed in 
terms of physiology. It means the mastication, 
digestion, absorption and assimilation of the things 
of life, as well as the elimination of the effete ; that 
is, the discard of that in life no longer useful, or 
no longer fitted to serve. 

Could one know something of every branch of 
recorded knowledge, he would have a tremendous 
capacity to enjoy, and be able to enjoy. 

So far on the way, the surplus yield of happi- 
ness over misery is to most persons little more than 

86 



enough to keep them in pursuit of a happiness they 
hope to realize, but which they — there are many 
reasons for believing — do not yet know enough to 
realize. So slowly do we learn, so stubborn does 
cur awakening appear to be, that to secure the 
end in view, the desire for betterment in the pro- 
cess of growth, must in most cases be accompanied 
and stimulated by a certain amount of inconve- 
nience, and in a few cases, a misery that can pause 
but little short of causing suicide. 

Much happiness, then, is impossible, under cir- 
cumstances of purposeless living, necessitating be- 
ing taught by suffering. 

When collected, classified and rationally con- 
sidered, are there not facts in abundance in our 
everyday life, to show that the discomfort of wrong 
moves is incessantly at work, driving us all slowly 
into right moves, wakefulness and improvement, 
and that from the present time, with increasing 
wakefulness, we are to work more purposefully, 
rapidly and comfortably into the form of improve- 
ment we call education? 

When measured by ideal conditions of happiness, 
there is at present comparatively little happiness 
in the world. This little, however, is a fact, and 
its increase is another fact — making greater happi- 
ness to come appear very probable. Increase of 

87 



life's conveniences, and of the capacity to receive 
and use appreciatively, is found taking place, and 
in proportion to this increase is experienced a cu- 
mulation of controllable happiness. 

In these two improvements is hidden the secret 
of the evolution of happiness. During the unfold- 
ing process, covering a time previous to the ap- 
pearance of much happiness, sufficient contentment 
is vouchsafed — granted to the life of ignorance — • 
not to give bliss, as is commonly believed, but 
enough comfort of life to keep it on the way. Su- 
perlative joy is the happiness of great understand- 
ing, and can appear, increasing in intensity, only 
as rapidly as ignorance ends. 

The method adopted by Nature allows to men 
the happiness they seek, in proportion to the intel- 
ligence used in the seeking, or the readjusting, im- 
provement of self and surroundings. 

To have learned to co-operate with this law of 
adaptation in the interest of increasing means and 
capacity to enjoy without being driven to do so, 
is to be in possession of the most important instru- 
mentality of use and progress that the experience 
cf life has to give. Ignorance and stubbornness 
are forever meeting the trouble they do not know 
how to manage. 

Refusal to learn tends to bring sufficient dis- 

88 



comfort to prevent laziness, stagnation, atrophy. 
A gain of intelligence with which to meet the new 
problems of life is required, and he who does not 
volunteer to furnish this gain, is urged to do so by 
some form of inconvenience, followed in cases of 
refusal to act, by suffering; a suffering which, if 
still unheeded, passes its victim on among the un- 
fitted to survive. 

When it can be clearly seen that few will learn 
during times of happiness; that a life of content- 
ment is not educating — in that the contented one 
feels no need of improvement — the cause of the 
turmoil of life can be better understood. 

And when generally understood, will not a con- 
tinuous and rapid progress be made, a fast growing 
happiness be found in voluntary intelligence-gaining, 
in the art of education, of education properly so- 
called ? 

To the extent that the ability to see the better 
thing ahead is gained, is the ability gained also 
10 form this better thing, and make way for its 
adoption, by the gradual elimination of the old 
and less worthy. 

Had the men in power previous to the late great 
war, been able to see its coming, in the causes at 
work; to see the comparatively little of value it 
was to bring to the world for the price paid, the 

89 



war would not have taken place. For they would 
have been able to see a way to obtain this little 
and far more, at but a trifle of the cost of the war, 
and without demoralizing effect or the sacrifice 
of a single life. 

What has been painfully gained by the pursuit 
of war, might have been comfortably gained by the 
pursuit of wisdom educationally established. If 
not, education is impossible. 

The plans of those who seek purposely, termi- 
nate successfully and satisfactorily, in proportion 
to the intelligence used. 

Life offers the opportunity to learrij to earn sub- 
sisistence, and gain some happiness. It is so im- 
pulsed and environed as to educate, in the sense 
of awakening in the individual a continuously larger 
consciousness, a greater strength of will and increas- 
ing freedom of action, to the point of voluntary 
control of the unfolding life. 

Consequently, certain indispensable requirements 
of growth are found entering into the process, one 
of which is that present dreams of happiness — or, in 
the words of the poet, ^Xistening to the Salutation 
01 the Dawn,'' must be continually interrupted by 
the nags of external conditions which keep alive 
the cosmic lure and urge within us. For could 
dreams come true with little effort, or were each 

90 



dream in its turn easily and satisfactorily inter- 
preted, men would soon pause in sweet content, and 
move on no more. 

The line of least resistance we call habit, then, 
admits of a comfortable move for a limited time 
only. Established in all men is a desire for change, 
and a tendency of this desire, acting as though in 
response to an airrij prevents habit-slavery from 
fastening itself upon and strangling the life of the 
mdividual, as well as of the human race, with stag- 
nation. 

Waste must be eliminated, obstructions removed 
from the channels along which life carries the re- 
building material of her evolving forms. Hence 
this desire for change, this unsatisfied longing in 
man that prompts him to travel and seek some- 
thing new; a change of food, climate and clothing; 
the feeling that does not allow him to let well 
enough alone, is the action of the psychological 
part of the habit-breaking process, and a factor 
of progress having tremendous value. 

For progress, in its process, is dual — construct- 
ive and destructive, and the service of habit in the 
process is confined to conserving constructive effects ; 
is dovoted to holding on, to producing fixity of 
structure, changelessness. Hence, habit-using needs 
intelligent superintending. Men tend to form hab- 

91 



its which master the desire for something new and 
prevent progressive change. All structures are but 
experimental forms, tentative holdings. 

In its fixing tendency appears the necessity, in the 
interest of progress, of breaking habits, as well as 
ol making them. 

Not only must bad habits be abandoned, but 
new habits must be formed. Higher forms, in- 
creasing in variety, must be forever emerging from 
and displacing the older and lower. 

In a practical and educational way, the possibil- 
ities therein contained are far from being fully un- 
derstood. If men learn, they must from time to 
time voluntarily change their ideas and ways of 
thinking, or be compelled to do so. 

Few have reached the larger understanding of 
how habit-forming and breaking may be used to 
effect a comfortable forward move. Few realize 
change to be necessary. Most men live in their 
early-made habit grooves, and in their conduct of 
life after reaching a certain age, tend to sink into 
a condition ever more changeless, helpless and un- 
comfortable; a condition in which, if life does not 
end prematurely, they linger on in childishness, 
uninteresting objects, to be humored by all about 
them. 

Likewise, in their discussions, their reading, their 

92 



voting, and their religious seeking, do we find the 
majority in a static mental condition, unable to 
improve, because of their habit-made pre-udices. 
And if in an argument, a bulwark of lies seems 
necessary to defend their views, they immediately 
proceed with the building. 

This slavery of prejudice or mental habit, at 
times emotionally manifesting, and now^ the rule 
of the human life, the law of progress has in pro- 
cess of slow correction. 

As, therefore, the sense-controlled and automatic 
actor allows his belief in short-cuts to negative 
bliss, and habits to gain control, he is gradually 
seized with unrest, filled with discomfort urging a 
change. 

But there are among us the stubborn cases of a 
prehistoric heritage. In many men this urge fails 
apparently to effect more than a fraction of its pur- 
pose. Consequently, to manage these, a more urgent 
means than the one of mere discomfort, is found 
established in the law of life, a sharper spur to 
meet the moving requirements; some form of suf- 
fering, such as sickness, business failure, disaster, 
a great war; some disturbance of sufScient size to 
develop the adequate intensity of feeling, to break 
up old habits and grasp of control in the interest 
of new and progressive building. 

93 



In a very particular way has this fact held true, 
and still holds true in the breaking up and removal 
of privilege-holding groups of men, governing 
groups, v^ealth producing and distributing groups, 
also groups of control in religion. 

However, once the conflict has been passed 
through, the old order broken up, and the readjust- 
ment made, the change, as a rule, is found to be 
for the better. 

The urge, as well as the lure of life, is onward. 
So in reviewing the experiences of his life, the pro- 
gressive man finds few among them, even those of 
the honeymoon sort, which inspire a longing desire 
for return. In the cinders of his experiences, he 
discerns but few diamonds, and in history he finds 
his own case paralleled. 

There is within us all an unsatisfied longing, a 
feeling that somewhere ahead there is greater hap- 
piness than any yet found, a feeling that we gain 
most by moving on. This feeling has much to do 
with keeping us on the move forward. 

In Nature's storehouse awaits the abundance 
to serve all of the specific needs of men. That life 
may be kept moving unfoldingly, the plan is 
equipped with irresistible inducements to keep up 
the species. That this task may not be shirked, 
Nature entices and pays for the service in the 

94 



glamour of love-making and the joys of honey- 
moon experience, followed by parental love. 

For a term, we find as a compensation, sweet- 
hearts buried by their feelings, followed by a term 
of parentage, in which the man and the woman are 
again submerged by their feelings, the interest in 
their children. For these children, in most in- 
stances, no task is found to be too arduous, no sac- 
rifice too great that has to do with their reaching 
adult age prepared for the battle of life. In ex- 
tremely few cases, however, does the course of 
the family life move smoothly on. 

Even parents are not allowed to stop and rest 
v/ith having placed the service of the family life 
with its lessons behind them. In proportion to 
their further needs, they are obliged to take other 
lessons of experience. Often, therefore, they are 
awakened from their restful feeling of having per- 
formed well, by a rude kick from their children, a 
bruise of greed or of forgetfulness, if not of ungrate- 
fulness or deprivation. 

This occurs, however, you may have noticed, 
much more frequently in the large families of less 
intelligence, than in the smaller families, where 
much pains have been taken to cultivate greater 
intelligence. 

Lack of preparation for marriage, over-breeding 

95 



and under-educating have a penalty attached, that 
as a rule parents must pay, in suffering from neg- 
lect of themselves by their children. Children 
thrown out into the world in ignorance are usually 
all through life pressed for time, for means, and 
often dulled in sensibility. 

It may well be believed that this experience of 
parents is a needed part of their education; for 
they must not only earn their joyous experiences, 
but by suffering, be taught to feel, also to act more 
wisely. As a rule, the children of such parents are 
considerably protected from suffering, by being 
somewhat oblivious to the pain which they inflict 
on parents. They act unconsciously and instru- 
mentally, rather than intelligently and purposely. 
Nor do they at the time realize that they, too, are 
acting with equal foolishness, and are likely to pass 
through about the same experience. 

Feeling, confined to the family life, tends, like 
all narrow fields of experience, to produce selfish- 
ness, in consequence of which, it often leads to dis- 
honesty, and it may lead to crime. It is but a short 
step on the unfolding way. It must, therefore, 
make men and women suffer, in order to arouse in 
them a feeling to take them further on the way to 
a larger inclusiveness. 

There seems to be a great meaning in the fact 

96 



that though every experience of this life tends to 
enlighten, to enlarge upon and to intensify the feel- 
ings, no experience seems to give all it should give. 
Perfect satisfaction, it is very probable, is nowhere 
felt — the urge is onward and upward — desired hap- 
piness always appears to be just ahead. Comfort- 
able settlements in life in time become palling; 
something more is desired, or something happens to 
start things moving. 

This imperfection of life's surroundings and of 
its expression, everywhere seen and felt, is by the 
man of understanding viewed optimistically rather 
than pessimistically. This dissatisfaction with self, 
with conditions, and with efforts in nearly every 
experience of life — that holds true, as a rule, of 
books, food, travel, farms and farmiq^-, house work, 
the dwelling place, climate, neighbors, calls and 
callers, work, government, chilcVen, discussions, 
plans, friends, cats and dogs — is viewed by the man 
of understanding, as a matter of indispensable im- 
portance. 

In fact, were it not a rule to which there are 
few, if any, exceptions, progress would be impossi- 
ble. And the greater the need of growth, the 
greater must be the sum of fault and imperfection 
found; the greater the restlessness, the change 

97 



sought, the disturbance experienced and the im- 
provement made. 

Have you, objecting reader (be honest in your 
answer), during your whole life, had many ex- 
periences of perfect satisfaction, many flawless dia- 
monds of emotion? Can you name a half-dozen, 
and if not, can you see therein any larger meaning? 

Is it a matter for repining, that only at intervals 
of time, the slackening of the speed of the move 
admits of some enjoyment, but not for long? Does 
there appear anything wrong in the fact that life 
gives but samples of happiness, allows only so much 
as we have earned a right of capacity to receive? 

Were it not that all of lifers experiences, even 
the most intense and thrilling, are accompanied by 
more or less that is unsatisfactory, would man be 
moved to seek further? Even in cases where re- 
sults are greater than anticipations, are we not 
thereby enabled to see unrealized possibilities, and 
lured and urged to reach them? 

Or have you, reader, reached in wisdom of se- 
lective contacts, and in aliveness, a degree of execu- 
tive power, wisdom and happiness, sufficiently high 
to give you, in your experiences, flawless satisfac- 
tion? If so, have you not reached the goal, or been 
discarded by progress? Before you answer, how- 
ever, correct any tendency you may have to over- 

98 



imagine, also any tendency to lie about the matter, 
in order to elevate yourself in the estimation of 
those to whom you lie. 

This lack of satisfaction, due to the expanse of 
our ideals and needs for larger growth, keeps us in 
pursuit. This, when fully understood, changes an- 
ticipation of fear to the power of joyous pursuit. 

The lure of anticipation rewards with the pleas- 
ures of pursuit, followed by the realization which 
brings with it the more intense and satisfactory 
feeling of accomplishment and possession. But no 
form of pursuit, however successful it may be, can 
in the nature of growth bring perfect and lasting 
satisfaction. Following each realization, a new 
anticipation must appear. This desire to go on 
serves instrumentally, and must lure men on to an 
increased sphere of consciousness, and ever larger 
accomplishments. 

He, therefore, who finds in the incompleteness 
of human accomplishment matter for complaint, 
has but little or no knowledge of life and its way 
of progress. 

In few experiences of life, does familiarity breed 
contempt in the mind where a deeper knowledge 
has been gained of the arrangement to store and 
hold the products of experience, in the form of 
character; enlarged capacity to do and to enjoy. 

99 



For with such gain, one can see even in lower 
orders of human conduct, that the contemptible 
deserves less to be condemned, being due, as it is, 
more largely to lack of understanding, and to that 
which they know not how to control, than to evil 
intent. 

Men and women are seldom as guilty as they 
seem. They do wrong, as we understand the mat- 
ter, but often unconsciously. That which they do, 
knowing it to be wrong, they feel to do with an 
intensity which they are not yet sufficiently strong 
in will to resist. 

It is impossible for any human being to use ap- 
preciatively, that in life which he yet lacks the 
capacity to understand. In a particular way does 
this lack of appreciation hold true of ideals of con- 
duct and of education. Many, therefore, are found 
performing unwisely, rejecting opportunities to 
read, to think and to act improvingly ; found abus- 
ing offers of advice, friendship and other matters 
of life too large for their capacity to admit to 
appreciative use or service. 

The too-large is always either rejected or abused 
by men and women, often with contempt, and the 
capacity better fitted with something found among 
a lower order of things, life and action. 

Whatever the seeming on the surface of things 

100 



may be, it is highly probable that we become Inter- 
ested in, pursue and capture a very close ap- 
proximate to the next things needed in the order ol 
our unfoldment. Are not the lessons of life best 
taught by experiences of about the right size to 
meet the requirements of next steps in the learning 
cf a larger wisdom and its consequent happiness ? 

For while a lesson is in progress, there is usually 
found forming in the mind of the learner a new 
desire, a larger ideal, one that nothing but a new, 
a larger experience, a more ambitious undertaking 
will satisfy; an experience which in the pursuit 
may bring much happiness; or it may be necessary 
that, in order to achieve the desired end, it involve 
great suffering and apparent failure. 

Decline of interest in objects of pursuit, begins 
as a rule, to take place soon after they are secured, 
and for the reason, very evidently, that in few 
cases is the thing secured or made the end. There 
is an ever present imperfection of human conduct, 
and of structure. Few, if any, ever find what they 
do, or say, or make, quite satisfactory. To be some- 
what taught by work, and to know more at the 
finish of a given undertaking than at the start; to 
find the insight clarified during the process, the 
foresight extended, the sphere of consciousness en- 
larged, is, as a rule, the reward. 

101 



So it is with word and deed, with things made, 
with acts confined to self, and with the conduct of 
h*fe toward others. The lesson learned in each 
pursuit of life — there are many good reasons for 
believing — is of more importance than the capture 
of the thing consciously pursued. In fact, the lesson 
learned and filed for future use, appears to be and 
h the prime object of all structure, speed and con- 
duct, // life, as it seemSj is engaged in building the 
larger man of the larger capacity for happiness. 

The correction of mistakes gives a new interest 
and a new lesson. The builder may be able to 
revise or to improve the old, with a change of parts, 
,or he may be obliged (it may be cheaper) to build 
entirely anew, in either machinery or conduct. 
, The knowledge-gain of the individual cumulates; 
so, also, does his power to gain knowledge and to 
progress; that is, the more a man learns, the faster 
can he learn. The learning of the ignorant person, 
his getting a start, is slow and laborious. 

So it is with the races of men. It must have 
taken ages, nearly countless, to evolve an alphabet. 
Take note of its rapidly-acting power today. 

Hence, in the interest of their awakening change, 
men of little intelligence are driven from the ex- 
cellent opportunities, the plentiful and easy of ac^ 
cess, in their immediate vicinity, which they do not 

102 



know enough to see and make useful. It is by our 
lack of knowledge that we are kept unappreciative 
and indifferent. Through ignorance, in its various 
forms of manifestation, as inaction, bad temper, jeal- 
ousy, contempt, deceit, pretense — the feeling that 
perhaps nothing is worth while — we remain fitted 
to be displaced by those able to learn. Thus, the 
aborigine, not being able to grasp the value of his 
American continent, was displaced by a race of 
larger understanding. 

Human progress would soon stop, were there 
no arrangements to drive men out of their preju- 
dice or habit ruts, and make them learn. 

The same thing holds true of nations. 

The Great War was evidently one of Nature's 
epochal efforts, a world shock, in the interest of a 
universal habit breaking and world awakening. 

Had leaders of the nations engaged in the con- 
flict known enough to educate their people out of 
their prejudice ruts, and kept the average of in- 
telligence and honesty but a trifle higher, this war 
would not have been needed and allowed to take 
place. But they had not learned to do this, nor 
have they yet learned. Men and nations still in- 
tensify their group prejudices, instead of breaking 
them. 

On turning to labor and monopoly — labor, the 

103 



manual producer of wealth, and monopoly, the 
holder and manager of the means of wealth pro- 
duction — the same law of growth is found in action. 
The two factors, by fighting, are to learn that the 
fight is in no sense necessary, except to increase 
the capacity to see both sides and human functions 
and relationships in larger and right ways. 

The prodigal youth leaves his home for the 
same purpose of learning by experience. The young 
man of large mental calibre may need other experi- 
ences by finding his home too narrow and non-pro- 
gressive to serve his needs of growth. The less 
calibred youth needs to be cured of his blinding 
narrowness by experience. In his case, familiarity 
with his surroundings without understanding, has 
created in his mind a feeling of indifference. He 
may be surrounded by great opportunities, for which 
he feels nothing but contempt. By having caught 
some of the fads, fashions and ephemeral foolish- 
ness of his day, home, to him, may seem to be old- 
fashioned. 

By his feelings he is driven far away, and into 
fields where other and far more needed experiences 
can be obtained. Before he can return from his 
prodigal trip with open eyes of understanding, he 
must be taught by suffering; taught to feel and to 
learn voluntarily. 

104 



Ignorant, gossipy, lying country neighborhoods 
are thus (in the interest of their awakening) ex- 
plained. Few among them have had much experi- 
ence, and few are readers. Hence they fail to 
understand the larger opportunities and persons 
of their surroundings. But they do grow somewhat 
by the struggle for subsistence, and by quarreling. 
As a rule, men and things of large value are here 
under-estimated, and equals are found engaged in 
quarreling over the most trifling matters. 

If among them there happens to be born one a lit- 
tle wiser than the majority, he is misunderstood, 
usually disliked, viewed as a freak or with jealousy, 
lied about and driven to the city, where, though 
less familiarly known, he is better understood, bet- 
ter appreciated, and will rise nearer to his true 
value among those approaching his calibre. 

In communities where ignorance reigns supreme, 
men and women take offense at trifles. Once of- 
fended, they proceed to cherish a bitter, revengeful 
hatred, constitute a very uncomfortable element, 
and often a dangerous one in the community. Most 
country school teachers will understand. The con- 
duct of such communities is due to narrow living, 
narrow reading and narrow thinking. 

He who finds himself living in an isolated coun- 
105 



try neighborhood not of this kind, is to be congratu- 
lated. 

The little informed need moving; hence they are 
always greatly attracted by the distant in time and 
space, in the far-away green fields, dead and distant 
men, and are better served by the near and familiar, 
when made up of the mediocre; for they have not 
yet earned the right of capacity to see, to feel, to use 
and to enjoy the greater among the near at hand 
men, women, opportunities and privileges of life. 

It is because they have not learned the wise use 
of many things in life, that the majority are held 
at arms length by the few who understand the fact. 

Communities in which the average of mental and 
moral capacity is small, are always engaged in some 
form of uproar. They manage, however, to keep 
on living and doing, for the compunctionless ease 
with which all concerned can meet lie with lie, 
gives them a reasonable comfort of life in an en- 
vironment where men and women of larger mental 
capacity would be tremendously uncomfortable. 

And when this is seen as a process of awakening 
mind and supplying its storage battery needs, which 
is Nature's way of awakening that understanding 
without which no appreciation of people, of places, 
or of things can be reached, our pessimism vanishes ; 
for by their conduct all men are planting and har- 

106 



vesting about what they now need, and gradually 
by learning more, they will lie less, perform bet- 
ter, and supply themselves better for the day of 
future use as larger personalities. 

Both philosophers and scientists are started 
thinking and guessing by some suggestion, a point 
from which, or hint by which they are enticed 
and urged to go on guessing and thinking. 

Among the most evident results of human ex- 
perience is growth of personality. May not this fact 
lead us to surmise, at least, if not to rationally infer 
the process to be continuous through lives of re- 
peated embodiments of some form; lives increasing 
in value, but in which during their early stages 
little is learned in a single life, while later on 
much will be learned in a single life, because set 
about more purposefully, with increasing under- 
standing ? 

Being deliberately undertaken, education is a 
rapid process of unfoldment. 

Progress is most rapidly made in the great and 
thickly populated centers, where there is most of 
the spur of personal contact, rivalry, competition. 
Sparsely populated districts are as a rule conserva- 
tive districts. It is in great cities that most great 
ideals are born into action, where there have always 

107 



been better schools, better libraries, and during the 
past few hundred years, lectures and book stores. 

Yet strange as it may seem, comparatively few 
are, even yet, awakened to appreciate these oppor- 
tunities, and to extract therefrom high value. The 
many, instead — being unawakened and unguided — 
gravitate to the pleasure-seeking channels of self- 
destructive fads and vices, and call it recreation. 

Nearly all, evidently, are slowly improving, but 
for the larger part, the functioning of men is in 
primitive ruts. 

Fear of the opinions of others assists small minds, 
and is morally bracing. It bridles the tongue, nar- 
rows bad conduct, puts on a clean collar, drives to 
club and church joining, to the bathtub, cleans up 
the front yard, and makes men and women tolerable 
long before they are tolerant. The most important 
lesson of life — that something cannot be wisely and 
comfortably used when had for nothing — seems 
the most difficult one to learn. 

Wherever one party gains at the expense of the 
efFort of another, there is a loss entailed by friction, 
and more or less hatred on the part of the loser 
is engendered, and loss of self-respect on the part 
of the material gainer. 

In our ignorance, we all flit from one drastic 
experience to another, in search of something for 

108 



nothing, while failing, and learning a trifle from 
each experience. The dog and his master are indi- 
viduals, but traveling in company, each receives 
a very different educational product from his ex- 
perience; each takes up to the limits of his capacity. 
But so it is with men and women who travel ; the 
amount taken on the way is proportioned to the 
preparation of capacity to take: a capacity deter- 
mined by previously acquired knowledge. 

The way men view and use themselves and their 
surroundings, then, is a very accurate measure of 
the degree of their awakeness, that is, their calibre. 
The cynic, the sneering 'pessimist, the man with 
the ''chip on his shoulder," as we say, more ready 
to argue than to discuss, and ever ready to fight all 
opinions, other than the narrow ones of his own 
education and experience, is merely struggling 
across the trouble stage of the adolescent mind. 

He whom you find on the way with a growl and 
the tear-filled eyes of self-pity, you will also^ as a 
rule, find about the same, and to be a whining 
failure — a failure that is quite as much due to the 
errors and dishonesties of his own life, as to those 
of the men, the institutions and systems to which 
he attributes them. Often his failure is due entirely 
to his own error of way. 

Such men and women, evidently, have not as yet 

109 



sighted the unfolding law of life, either as to adjust- 
ing their surroundings to themselves, or themselves 
to their surroundings. 

A requirement of intelligent effort is found es- 
tablished in the laws of life. Living exacts a price, 
and he who in the belief that the world owes him a 
living, thinks he can shirk paying the price, ere 
long finds himself in trouble ; for life is not fatuous. 

Unawakened ones are far too prone to attribute 
their poverty, their troubles and failures of life to 
others, rather than to themselves; their own lack 
of knowledge, wastefulness and laziness. 

You cannot win with honesty, we are often told. 
As a matter of fact, however, hom many of the 
dishonest winnings, commonly viewed as successful, 
have ever been followed through to their finality? 

If success worth the having is ever won by dis- 
honest methods, our belief in moral evolution is a 
mistaken one. 

True success may not be made up of many dol- 
lars, but of that which has far more value. True 
success must be won by a gain of understanding, 
honest work, economy, self-reliance, firmness; and 
when thus won, brings money, and with it much 
that money cannot buy. 

It is a common mistake of simple minds to sup- 
pose that wasteful spending is true living, and leads 

110 



to the innumerable difficulties of indebtedness, loss 
of independence and failures, along the way through 
life. 

Nature appears to be trying to make something 
larger of us all, and she is as kind as possible in 
doing that which must be done, in order to meet 
the requirements of this aim. 

Reaching the place of wise and deliberate conduct 
of life, is a matter of slow movement, unless set 
about with deliberate educational effort to achieve 
this particular end. There is a penalty attached 
to prodigal use, on the one hand, and to miserly 
hoarding, on the other hand, each due to an unwise 
attitude of mind. 

So the reader need not imagine that his troubles 
are so much greater than those of most others. 
Even those who refrain from conduct purposely 
wrong, make mistakes in their learning, but they 
can gain greatly in strength and wisdom by fight- 
ing out the correction thoughtfully and largely 
alone. Sympathy has value, but so has lack of sym- 
pathy. Lack of sympathy may tend to embitter a 
small soul, but it cultivates sympathy in the larger 
one; it puts "pep'' into the character, stiffens the 
backbone, gives stamina, vim, snap, and the strength 
of mastery. 

This program of the human life is far from being 

111 



as partial on the one hand and brutal on the other 
as it seems. No more than the man of poverty, 
does it allow the man of millions to shirk and es- 
cape the experiences of discomfort and even of suf- 
fering. Experiences differ, but may we not sus- 
pect in all cases they take the learner through the 
most appropriate disturbance to reach the desired 
aim. 

The rich, no less than the poor, have their edu- 
cating experiences of life. Both are to obtain more 
therefrom when they have learned to use experience 
to better ends; learned their self-destructive effect 
of dishonesty, the futility and unmanliness of mere 
complaint; learned to waste less time weeping over 
past mistakes and failures, to spend less time and 
money in fighting ^ and more in educating. 

The man of millions earns the right to be happy, 
only so far as he has gained honestly what he holds ; 
learns that even then his possessions are held consid- 
erably in the nature of a loan or trust, and should 
be used beyond his own needs, educationally for 
others, rather than to exploit and take advantage 
cf others, or to take away their experiences, by a 
monopoly of their opportunities. 

So, too, must the poor man learn to be opulent, 
to demand the opportunity to build the capacity to 
earn and to enjoy his earnings; and the right to be 

112 



happy, by being true to the possibilities of knowl- 
edge-getting with which he has been entrusted. 

Nature's favorites are very largely in the seem- 
ing; all men are rebuked with more or less of in- 
convenience and suffering in the interest of their 
improvement, rebuked for the neglect of their op- 
portunities, also for the priveleges granted them, 
and which they proceed to abuse; the wealthy man 
for his efforts to monopolize and exploit, the poor 
man for his ignorance, self-neglect, dishonesty, 
hatred, and tears of self-pity. 

Each may find in life the experiences fitted to 
his growing needs, comparatively few of which the 
average man has learned to use understandingly 
and therefore wisely. 

Often, in the prison life a needed education is 
found, though one which might have been better 
gained in less time, for less expense, and with far 
more ease, had the learner known enough to stay 
out of prison, and to use his opportunities to proper 
ends. 

It is theoretically possible to do that which few 
ever succeed in doing — to act wisely, without first 
acting foolishly. Wise conduct must be thought- 
fully acquired. Practice leads toward perfection. 
In the making or earning of a thing, alone, can the 

113 



capacity be created to understand, to appreciate, 
to wisely use and enjoy the thing. 

To the extent that something for nothing is ob- 
tained — like sudden prosperity, an unearned for- 
tune, unearned wages, or by stealing— -does the re- 
cipient thereof become prodigal and meet trouble. 
Those who learn to use themselves and their sur- 
roundings wisely and bravely, truly succeed. The 
too-timid to claim his own, must be kicked into the 
braver attitude of self-reliance, self-appreciation, 
and use. The selfish types who greatly over-esti- 
mate themselves, and the value in the world of their 
service to others, progress has in hand to humiliate 
into a sane and wholesome modesty — even Napo- 
leons are taught this lesson. 

In awakening timid persons to their true value, 
they are often better served with the heroic treat- 
ment which the world gives them, than with words 
of encouragement from the kindly disposed. 

Nature has a treatment for each case in her uni- 
versal program of happiness-earning. To praise 
the one of small calibre, flatteringly, to boost, and 
to pay him more than he earns, to trust him with 
a kindly consideration beyond his understanding 
and appreciation, and therefore beyond his deserts, 
is certain to lead him into an over-estimate of him- 
self ; often to abuse the kindness, even to become an 

114 



enemy of the one who gives the treatment. Parents 
having an only son or daughter frequently make 
this mistake, and are sometimes cured by its results. 

Comfortable, appreciative use must come with 
the earning and the learning. 

In all departments of the human life, the swag- 
ger of ignorance may be observed in men in the 
event of their having secured unearned or easily 
acquired prosperity. Few seem able to use any 
newly acquired form of power discreetly, or when 
en first discovering some new power within them- 
selves, to hold back the egotism and dishonesty 
which it tends to evoke. 

To obtain the means of considerable independ- 
ence is of very great importance in this life, if 
used, as it quite frequently is not used, in the in- 
terest of self-improvement, as well as in other le- 
gitimate ways. For the discovery of one's ability 
to secure some independence, means the discovery 
of a new power, the use of which must be learned. 
In the meantime, while the learning is on, the 
*'swell of the head'' needs watching. 

Poverty means that the right of capacity to be 
rich has not been earned ; and is not necessarily 
a praiseworthy condition. 

115 



In present conditions and events can be seen 
evidence of great lack and great wrong. 

Great possessions are not praiseworthy holdings, 
unless obtained by honest means, and used in fair- 
ness and without ostentation. 

All humane persons feel that the two extremes 
of wealth and poverty should not exist, but the facts 
must be recognized, and when more philosophi- 
cally and deeply considered, lead us to see that all 
this inequality will pass away as fast as these ex- 
tremes learn what honest earning and honest use 
will do to bring happiness to all. 

Toward this dream or distant picture, men are 
slowly moving, and by fighting rather than by vol- 
untary efforts conducted with intelligence and hon- 
esty. 

Let us not imagine, then, that this tremendous 
struggle in which the world is now engaged, is 
nearing the end. It has a great work to perform, 
and appears at this stage of human unawakeness, to 
be the only means of education that can be suc- 
cessfully employed. We are awakened to the use 
of our means of self-protection, taught to feel re- 
spect for the rights of others, by being fleeced. So 
long as we act on the belief of a brutal fitness to 
survive as being the best, we must live and learn 
our lessons in a world of brutal conduct. 

116 



If the majority reap comparatively little benefit 
from present gain of progress, whom have they to 
blame but themselves? For their deprivation is due 
to a system which they in their waste of means and 
spare time in pursuit of pleasure, self-indulged lazi- 
ness, and therefore ignorance, allow to persist while 
they are deluged with abundance of information, 
which, if heeded, learned and used, would enable 
them to get together and install a system in which 
no tyranny, slavery and poverty could exist. 

This system is in process of evolution. To its 
establishment men are being driven. It means one 
to be; one not of ever greater compulsion, but of 
ever greater individual independence of action. 
When a man has become wise, he will be reliable. 
When all men become wise, all will be reliable, 
all free, all rich. 

The apparent intent, then, of this struggle of 
life, is to awaken, to evolve human character of a 
higher class, and to the end of a more remote and 
larger happiness. Every social system — monopol- 
istic, monarchial or socialistic — that interferes 
with freedom to compete, will be found want- 
ing, and ultimately will be cast off among the un- 
fitted to survive, with tremendous suffering of 
all concerned. 

117 



To the extent of this struggle, through which 
the laws of life come to be understood, events an- 
ticipated and used as opportunities, will rapid for- 
ward movement be made, harmony of action creep 
in, and happiness be secured. But for some time 
to come, we may look for most initial steps to be 
taken blindly, moved largely from behind the 
scenes of life, beyond human knowledge and will. 

The cultivation of self-reliance without being 
driven, is a matter of great importance. In learn- 
ing to do for ourselves that which we now employ 
high-priced quacks to do for us, we gain in strength 
of will and wisdom, and remove the necessity fox 
lawyers, doctors, failures, religious revivals, pris* 
ons, police and war. 

In this way the attachment, detachment and re- 
attachment, through which feeling and correct use 
are evolved, run through all life; and the evident 
purpose is an educational one — the learning of les- 
sons by way of many experiences — it is the push 
and the pull of progress. 

This feeling of enough of a thing; this desire 
for change, for something new and better, is made 
up of that repulsion and attraction which makes 
possible construction and reconstruction in all the 
forms of life's expression, and should be used with 

118 



understanding. Except for this very important 
iconoclastic urge and reconstructive lure, life could 
never in its action depart from the line of least re- 
sistance; never could it throw off the bondage of 
habit, of prejudice, of dogma, get out of its ruts 
and go on with better and higher building, to the 
end of a higher happiness. 



119 



OF WHAT, THEN, IS LIFE IN PURSUIT? 

IN former chapters it has been shown that all life 
is born into surroundings where surviving needs 
cannot be met without effort. 

Thus, through action which is largely compul- 
sory, do human beings become individual; uncon- 
sciously they are driven onward and upward into 
conscious control and direction of their unfoldment 
into higher conditions of existence. 

Possibly, as referred to in a former chapter, 
some way other than the one of compelling them to 
make all this improvement for themselves might 
have been established. This way, however, serves 
to confer responsibility, to strengthen and free the 
action of the will, to drive and coax man onward 
and upward, and on the way to a cumulation of 
knowledge, and increasing reliability of word and 
deed. 

A being capable of creating and setting in mo- 
tion this universe, should be able to devise the best 
plan for human unfoldment — a small part of the 
creation. And in viewing this work in the light 
of present gain of knowledge, it seems safe to as- 
sume that this, the evolutionary way of life, is a 
most excellent way; the best so far, as we are yet 
able to conceive, possibly the only way. 

120 



In the natural tendency of man, and in the urge 
and lure of his surroundings, may be seen all the 
equipment necessary to make his improvement pos- 
sible and continuous. Subsistence must be earned, 
and by his own efforts. So must his surroundings 
be fitted to serve his needs. He is so constituted 
as never to be able to reach sufficient perfection in 
his earnings and fittings, to give complete satisfac- 
tion. Since he does not particularly like work, he 
seeks by work to get rid of work along lines of 
least resistance, seeks to find ever easier ways to 
supply his needs and to gratify his desires. Thus 
does he keep moving and improving both himself 
and his surroundings. In the meantime, he grad- 
ually learns to like work, and goes on emerging 
ever more completely .out upon the plane of volun- 
tary and comfortable action. 

All along the way, while being enticed to im- 
prove by his desire for less and better work, and 
for better things, he is encouraged to proceed with 
successful effort. The discomfort of his compul- 
sory struggle, of his dissatisfaction with himself, 
with what happens, with what he has and what he 
does, drives him to improve both himself and ni? 
surroundings. 

All self-improvement appears to be made possible 
through the instrumentality of the nerve lines of 

121 



the body, back over which the experiences of life are 
passed, to be stored in the form of memory and 
feeling, not only as organic results, but also as psy- 
chological results, in the subsconscious mind or mem- 
ory. This storing process of the nervous system 
seems to stand at the head of its functions. Prog- 
ress appears to be a psychological process, rather 
more than a physical one, or we may say that all 
improving results manifest naturally through a psy- 
chological process. In the unfolding, building 
seems to work by reflex, from the within to the 
without, more than the reverse. 

This bustling, stinging, excruciating discipline of 
life, which refuses to let up for a moment, is an 
educative process, dual in action, and works by 
external stimulation and internal response. Thus, a 
desire for accomplishment builds up from within, 
with the knowledge, the energy and the will of 
creative action. 

Increase of understanding appears as the central 
achievement of human living; fitness to survive de- 
pends upon observing the law in conformity there- 
with. Each individual is found equipped with suf- 
ficient freedom of will to improve or not to im- 
prove, and he will decide to improve as fast as he 
is driven to understand that on improvement de- 

122 



pends increase of means, capacity to enjoy, and 
fitness to survive. 

Suffering cannot be intended as punishment in 
the sense in which human beings use the term. It 
serves, however, to promote and protect progress, 
by making the way to happiness understood and 
felt. In that it is a warning discomfort in times 
of inaction, it tends to promote action to stimulate 
production and to protect the product. Or we may 
speak of it as a reminder through which attention 
is arrested, and errors of way corrected. 

For, in our lack of efforts to learn, we encounter 
the consequences of sickness, of poverty, warfare 
and unreliability by which we are taught to make 
the effort to learn ; taught the better ways of volun- 
tary improvement. 

In our efforts to improve, we also make mistakes^ 
and learn to correct them by the inconvenience 
entailed. It is by the discomforts of wrong living, 
that most right living is taught, and the lessons 
repeatedly taught, until finally turned into practice, 
much as in the evolution of the lower animals. 

The rat still survives, by having evolved much 
persistence, and by the retention of some power of 
adaptation; that is, it is somewhat intelligent and 
not quite automatic in its action; it learns from its 
mistakes, and the majority of men have learned 

123 



to do but little more. Can the inconvenience to 
which life subjects the rat be viewed, in any sense, 
as what orthodox Christians call punishment, or 
even in quite the sense of what Theosophists call 
Karma? Is it not due rather to the adaptive strug- 
gle? 

First acts are seldom right, and never perhaps 
quite satisfactory, even when right, till verification 
has been obtained by trying one or more wrong 
ways. Thus are lessons learned ; thus do men evolve 
an equipment of voluntary education, an alphabet, 
a printing press, a supply of books, of magazines, 
of papers, and of schools. 

The established plan unfolds human intelligence, 
and the free action of the will to make intelligence 
useful; it also unfolds moral conduct to make life 
enjoyable, consequently, to achieve the end in view, 
the program must leave open the way for all to 
be about as lazy, as dishonest and as criminal as 
they choose. It must also, for the same educational 
purpose, permit freedom to all to shirk, to lie, to 
cheat and to fight. 

It does not, however, allow the unpleasant con- 
sequences thereby entailed to be avoided. Could 
these be shirked, the plan would be frustrated, for 
the lessons would not be learned. 

Though the evolution of human personality takes 

124 



place under conditions ot freedom to seek and find 
the law of its own unfoldment, few among us have 
reached that stage of personal growth when great 
lessons can be learned in comfortable ways. Not 
many have learned to reason their way back from 
the ills of life to even their immediate causes, and 
extremely few can reach causes which lie somewhat 
more deeply imbedded. 

For this same lack of reason, few can see and 
plan far ahead; few can generalize, few seem able 
to see with sufficient clearness to prevent by reform 
the bad future results now in preparation by their 
present conduct of life. Hence, the prevalence of 
sickness, revolution and war, ignorantly prepared. 

The program of this life appears to be one of 
awakening, by building the capacity to see in larger 
ways, rather than one to enjoy the trifling capacity 
already gained. 

The human concept of duration being a very lim- 
ited one, the move in the direction of happiness- 
gaining appears to be a very slow process, and as a 
m.atter of fact, present gain, or the gain made large- 
ly by experience or practice, is slow, when compared 
with what might be accomplished by experiment, 
educationj efforts to improve, more intelligently, 
earnestly and honestly undertaken. 

In the early ages, the discomfort of being driven 

125 



through experience to learn was viewed as punish- 
ment, at the hands of an unseen power, and in the 
human sense of punishment; the fact, apparently, 
which in part gave birth to the devil and hell of all 
the religions thus equipped that have ever arisen 
among men. 

Life may be better viewed, we think, as made 
up of learning from the discomforts of experience. 
To make this learning more deliberate and pur- 
poseful, lessens the trouble and constitutes the wis- 
dom of life and action. The feeling of apprecia- 
tion, and therefore of enjoyment, comes by way of 
the effort that brings not alone bread and butter, 
but greater wisdom, more freedom, expanse of 
consciousness. 

The fact that the speed of the improving process 
is allowed to move more slowly than it need move, 
is due largely to the reluctance of parting from the 
old, the prejudice-clinging of the affections to old 
forms and modes of action, the **hold-on'* of the 
mind, the static psychology that accompanies and 
retards the move of all bettering change. 

It is well, however, to keep in mind the evidence 
that, in part, the slowness is in the seeming; that 
evolution is at work on a plan for human welfare 
far too mighty to be carried out in accordance with 

126 



our limited understanding of size and quickness. 
Progress has far to go, much to do. 

Why are we all held in slavery by the persistence 
of institutions that make men unreliable — when 
honesty and freedom could be easily doubled with a 
few simple changes that would make it pay men 
to be honest — unless all this slavery and unTiappiness 
is doing something for men that freedom and hap- 
piness could not accomplish? Will not this condi- 
tion for some time continue? Can tt change for 
the better faster than higher ideals are made to 
lead? Plainly, to men to whom living means no 
more than the present life with its gain and grati- 
fication, life can give no great amount of happi- 
ness. 

In so far as one has learned to volunteer improve- 
ment instead of waiting to be driven to improve, 
so far has he learned one among the very important 
lessons of life. 

In all life there is a requirement of improving 
change, that serves better in the human life and 
all its appurtenances, if recognized and made at its 
first appearance of being needed. Waiting entails 
a loss in the form of delayed use of the new, also 
a loss of time that must be given to the expensive 
breaking up and removal of time accumulations of . 
waste and dead forms, as may be observed in sick- 

127 



ness and failure, in the home and the business life 
of the individual, and in the national life in the 
form of revolutions and other forms of warfare. 
Men in groups and as individuals, are forever mov- 
ing onward into situations where more highly or- 
ganized forms are required as instrumentalities of 
progress, or even of continued survival. The delay 
of progressive political and economic changes by the 
creation and working retention of special privileges, 
is a stupidity largely responsible for bringing about 
revolutions and international wars. 

Why, then, the formation, why the retention, 
why the blindness, if happiness in this life, rather 
than knowledge-gaining, is the creative aim? For 
even the privilege-holding beneficiaries, not utterly 
blind, should be able to see that happiness for them- 
selves as well as for the majority is impossible, ex- 
cept through the instrumentality of a system grant- 
ing ^^equal rights to all and special priviliges to 
none." Men are not equal, but they have in the 
nature of things, equal rights. 

In whatever direction we seek, the program of 
this life appears planned to give only enough en- 
joyment to hold human interest while passing 
through the discomfort necessary to build capacity 
to take large enjoyment and receive greater happi- 
ness than this life is able to give. 

128 



In order to render endurable the discomforts 
that accompany the destructive discard of the things 
of life no longer fitted to survive, the involuntary 
exchange of the poorer factors of progress for the 
better, men set up psychological sedatives or totem 
poles in great number and variety of form, instead 
of meeting as they are slowly learning to do, each 
requirement of the law of change at its inception. 

Back in the dim ages, sun worship, star worship, 
sex worship, nature worship were in vogue ; later 
on many other guesses were made, evolved and in- 
stituted, coming down to Buddhism, Christian Sci- 
ence, New Thought, etc. 

So that life, on the whole, is becoming more pur- 
posefully conducted, because more thoughtfully, 
more philosophically, more scientifically and com- 
fortably conducted. Men are making for them- 
selves better gods, or better expressed god concepts, 
because the image, the ideal man after which they 
pattern their gods is improving. The enlightening 
of men, is by making them reliable, putting their 
devils out of business, and enabling them to improve 
without the assistance of a devil. 

The present sum of human knowledge has been 
gained very largely by the undirected struggle of 
life ; it is more a product of occupational experience 
than of deliberate effort to learn. Most of what 

129 



we are and have today, has been picked up and 
passed along during the days that are past; future 
men and possessions are being more purposefully 
carved out in the struggle of today, with the assist- 
ance of education. Slowly is it being learned that 
the highway leading most directly to freedom is 
the one of voluntary enlightenment. 

To voluntarily acquire good health and the abil- 
ity to work easily, cheerfully and skillfully, is to 
achieve a very large measure of freedom and com- 
fort of life, while lack of effort, or work under 
protest, usually brings trouble. 

Yet the majority still learn of the short way 
at the end of the long way, and all learn through 
some form of imposed slavery, largely self-imposed 
or allowed. Some learn their lessons mobilized, 
others in the treadmill of the family life, the pro- 
fessional or the business life, while a few must yet 
be awakened by a term in the penitentiary. 

The rule of life is that so far, lond and expert- 
sive ways are taken to learn short lessons. Why 
unless during the time of learning the obvious 
lesson, the process is of necessity a slow one, be- 
cause something not so obvious is being gained, a 
larger capacity, a capacity to receive happiness which 
the smallness of present capacity will not admit? 

130 



Progress does not appear to be satisfied with either 
present human ability to do or capacity to enjoy. 

Awakening instrumentalities, therefore, are not 
mistakes, and they may be seen in operation and in 
abundance all about us, with beneficent psychologi- 
cal attachments of only-way religions, to keep men 
and women endurable to themselves and to others. 
For if, during the time of the smarting experiences 
of their awakening, they were not held in check 
by their fears of' men, institutions, and totem poles 
or god concepts, each would be a menace to the 
other. 

Though compulsory or warfare education always 
comes high, to teach big lessons it seems to be nec- 
essary; and w^e manage to meet our tuition fees 
with church support, bonds, mortgages, installment- 
buying, interest, personal property tax, rents, bank 
monopolies, and by investing in other high-priced 
shoddy and quackery, for we are evidently but on 
the way, struggling through present-day stupidities 
to something larger. 

Many men take advantage of other men, when 
and where they find they can do so, and see 
no penalty attached. And in cases where these 
others are driven by wrong to learn to protect them- 
selves against wrong, they survive themselves among 
the fitted to survive. 

131 



Warfare, apparently,-"is meeting some require- 
ment of group education, and must continue until 
such time as all the lessons have been learned that 
quarreling between individuals, conflict between and 
within groups, and warfare among the nations can 
teach. 

Only by assuming the purpose of life to be edu* 
cational, with the working process so far chiefly in- 
voluntary, can what we find in life, including mon- 
opoly, misguiding monopoly-controlled newspaper 
education, and warfare, be explained with any sat- 
isfaction, for all the facts of life contribute their 
testimony in evidence thereof. 

In no way but as an educational function, are 
we able to explain most of the facts of leadership. 
However much a leader of men may know, he is 
allowed to accomplish comparatively little, for the 
educational requirements of his constituency pre- 
vent a wisdom of service much beyond the average 
of intelligence and honesty. 

To obtain place, the leader must first subscribe 
to the dominant religion of his day, and as a repre- 
sentative, he must lead his church, club, city, state 
and national group "into and through sufficient dis- 
honest, infernal, and foolish experience and suf- 
fering, to meet their expectations and the require- 
ments of their educational needs. 

132 



For instance, no man, however great his wisdom 
might be, could become president of the United 
States without first creating the impression that he 
subscribes to the Christian religion. 

Whether by design or otherwise, out of the 
struggle of life, improvement emerges as an effect.. 
In this world of abundance, it has taken countless 
ages of want and suffering to teach men to produce 
much to useful ends. Other ages have passed and 
are passing in teaching them to distribute these 
products with honesty. 

How much longer does this fight need to con- 
tinue, to bring about sufficient awakening to make 
men reasonably just and honest? What form 
must it assume, how intense must it become, what 
degree of revolutionary destruction must take place 
in reaching the pause, and the time of intelligent 
and honest reconstruction? 

The answer must be given speculatively, for we 
do not know the dimensions of the plan, the size 
of the achievement, nor quite the density and stub- 
bornness of the ignorance to be overcome on the 
way. 



133 



THE COSMIC URGE WITHIN US 

CAN these philosophies of life, then, which 
advocate the retirement of the individual from 
the broad highways of conflict to the secluded by- 
ways of life, be of the wisest? If so, why are things 
as we find them? 

Comparatively few who believe in our back-to- 
nature theories, retire to the Walden Ponds of life. 
For there resides within us all a forward lure, and 
within our surroundings an urge, a proclivity here 
and a necessity there, which will not allow us to 
find much satisfaction in seclusion. Even the din 
of warfare is yet attractive to many, who attribute 
this attraction to their red blood, instead of to the 
fact of an adolescent mind. 

Note the difficulty with which a physically ma- 
tured young man is kept on the farm. We find 
him drawn by an irresistible desire into the stren- 
uous life, lured to seek expression in the maelstrom 
of traffic, drawn into the bustling current of the 
streets by the feeling that he must take part in the 
turmoil and the strife; that he must step into the 
struggle where rapid change takes place; and glad- 
ly does he change his palling silence, deadening, 
changeless contact, for noise, variety and rapid 
motion, even though it may tire, worry and bring 
disaster. 

134 



There he may not live as long, but he lives more 
largely and intensively to the purpose of his im- 
proving needs, while he does live. Man is a social 
being, impelled to seek unfoldment in the pleasures 
and tortures of personal contact, to seek the experi- 
ences that evolve the better physical, mental and 
moral man, to make up the larger personality. 

Freedom appears, harmony creeps in, comfort of 
social action develops as fast as capacity unfolds, 
and mutual understanding is reached, through sym- 
pathies and a knowledge of facts learned and' held 
among men in common. Toward this end, no other 
one factor of progress has served so largely as the 
printing press. 

Do not those who deny that present civilization 
is of a more highly evolved grade than any of those 
by which it has been preceded, fail to recognize the 
tremendous civilizing power given to the present 
by the printing press? To this wonderful fastener 
and disseminator of knowledge, is chiefly due the 
fact that a citizen living in the storm and bustle 
of today has an opportunity to learn more in one 
year, than a citizen in the days of Ancient Rome 
lived and learned in two, possibly five years. For 
we have moved on, through an evolving change 
chiefly psychological. Men are awakening by print- 
ed page suggestion. In their early stages they imi- 

135 



tate, and we speak of their ^'aping/' meaning that 
the lower animals are realized to improve by imi- 
tation. 

It is due chiefly to the printing press, that a 
far larger degree of general intelligence, of mutual 
understanding and freedom of group action has 
been reached than in any former age of the world, 
though it appears to be but at the beginning. 

With the printing press as a means of gaining 
further intelligence, and a better understanding 
within and among large competing groups of men 
and women, it is very doubtful if ever again it will 
be possible for any group of religious fanatics, any 
political party, combination of monopolistic rascals, 
or any nation led by a half-insane bunch of greedy, 
bullying egotists, to arise, sufficiently large in num- 
ber, intensity of belief and power, to dominate the 
world and plunge it into a darkness such as it passed 
through during the Middle Ages; and this, not- 
withstanding the menace of monopolistic wealth on 
the one hand and monopoly-tending socialism on 
the other, both of which must be watched continu- 
ously and fought back by the saner freedom-holding 
element. 

In spite of the monopoly of paper to prevent it, 
the printing press has a great progressive work 
before it. So have other forms of education. 

136 



The most evident function of the experiences of 
this life is to teach lessons. The more men are 
driven to learn, the faster do they volunteer to learn. 

Rather, then, than recline negatively during 
the day in some protected nook, is it not better to 
act purposefully, to return from the day's work 
with something having been learned, something ac- 
complished, even though at the expense of being 
tired, and with a headache? 

If you, reader, happen to be laboring under the 
influence of some of these semi-truthful "back-to- 
nature" philosophies, meanwhile, blaming yourself 
for remaining in this bustle of life, you may, by 
thinking, come to realize that you are acting in re- 
sponse to an urge and a need within you calling for 
a much larger and more active conduct of life than 
this reverting, negative philosophy of '^back-to- 
nature." 

This active life is ours. What we need is the 
education of experience in an active life, rather than 
retirement; more education, properly so-called, 
to the end of more intelligence, more self-control 
to act within the turmoil, more initiative and posi- 
tiveness to demand the opportunity to act more 
fully, honestly, wisely and comfortably. 

Why is it that men and women so often turn 
back to the superstitions of their childhood in re- 

137 



ligion, when they become old and good for little, 
or when they have failed to learn what they might 
have learned? Have they not, by having acquired 
fixed habits, become lazy and inactive, loaded them- 
selves with dead matter, lost their power to make 
energy and to improve; in consequence of which, 
getting through with life by slow suicide? 

Is this dream of perpetual youth a delusion, or 
the beckoning of a realizable ideal? Few in this 
life learn half what they might learn, and what 
men will some day come to learn in the time of a 
longer and better conducted single life. 

To become more fully conscious of life's unfold- 
ing way, is to keep more closely in pursuit of our 
best ideals. 

For, in this unfoldment, discoveries and inven- 
tions break in upon the consciousness through life's 
contacts, and make trouble for men in the propor- 
tion that their use is thoughtlessly learned. 

So it is found to be with the birth of ideals. 
Their evolution into practice is slow and trouble- 
some unless thoughtfully undertaken. Every act 
is preceded by the birth of the idea by which it is 
prompted; hence every invention is the materialized 
form of a mental prototype, made up of ideas. Even 
in learning a trade, knowledge of what to do, must 

138 



precede the doing, and the more deliberately made, 
the better. 

In education, theory precedes practice, and the 
better the theory is learned, the more wisely con- 
dected will be the practice that follows. 

The way to all human achievements is pioneered 
by the thought manipulation of ideas, consequently 
no man can ever express his thoughts quite as fast 
and as well as he can think them. 

The idea is the lure of the pioneering mind ; it is 
a picture that breaks in upon the consciousness, or 
is set up by that mental power which makes pro- 
gressive change possible. 

Hence, the idea is the building material of the 
imagination. It appears as a forerunner, not as a 
realization, as something to practice reaching, for 
— a lure to keep up human interest. 

The realizations of today were once but ideals 
— the hopes of remote yesterdays. The ideals of 
today are the possible realizations of some remote 
or near tomorrow. 

Ideals seek tangible expression through the mind ; 
as ambitions, as the call of a picture to be painted, 
2 song to be sung, a gold mine to be prospected, 
a machine to be invented, a book to be written, a 
speech to be made, a farm to be tilled, a thought to 
be expressed, each of which, from the day of its 

139 



inception in the mind, to the day of its appearance 
in some tangible form, keeps clamoring for ex- 
pression. 

So is kept up the march of ideals, by the improving 
change of self and society, changes in both of which, 
though taking place at an accelerated rate of speed, 
are still slow of process, when compared with what 
in all probability the move will become in a not 
very remote tomorrow, when ideal-realizing as well 
?s forming has become the more particular concern 
of education. 

Through this uproar and expensive conflict car- 
ried on between those who desire change and those 
who are opposed to change — both sides largely ig- 
norant of the right thing to do — many of the best 
among men, women and ideals of today are denied 
normal expression. 

Nature effects her wonders of improving change 
through a process of continuous reconstruction, a 
simultaneous move of construction and destruction, 
which, without creating more disturbance than the 
birth-pangs of growth, leaves behind it a product 
of improvement to show for its effort. 

This — Nature's method — we are long in becoming 
wise and honest enough to adopt in education; we 
are long in learning to refuse to fix upon ourselces, 
or to have fixed upon us rigid forms of conserva- 

140 



tism, which must be broken up and cast aside all at 
one time by some murderous conflict, long in learn- 
ing to adopt that which will make for quiet and 
comfortable progress. 

So, do we find man, as an individual, long in 
learning better than to load himself with physical, 
intellectual, moral and spiritual garbage, long in 
learning not to fix upon himself habits of killing 
prejudice that cannot be cast aside. 

The arrival of very intense efforts to educate, 
appears to lie some distance in the future. Warfare, 
turmoil and suffering must serve their allotted time 
in making of men as educational factors, what 
progress has in view, by driving them to see that 
each great question of life has two sides. 

At present in action may be seen on the one side 
groups of blind reformers, performing with but 
little intelligence. We have with us the great army 
of weeping sentimentalitsts ; those, also, of the loud, 
denouncing, screaming, destructive sort. 

The same lack of understanding explains the con- 
duct of the smaller company on the other side, made 
up of the stubbornly selfish, monopolistic, grasping 
and holding types of men. 

Since education is likely to be some time in giv- 
ing to men sufficient general knowledge ; knowl- 
edge of philosophy, of science, of history, and par- 

141 



ticularly of political economy, to enable them to 
realize that the conservative and the progressive 
are the two inseparable halves, the complementary 
factors of unfolding life in all its forms, much 
conflict may yet be looked for. 

Warfare, the school of ignorance, greed and dis- 
honesty, is a tremendously expensive institution at 
which to educate. It is, however, encouraging to 
reflect that as a school, it is slowly unfitting itself 
to survive, slowly disintegrating, slowly effecting 
self-destruction, slowly giving way, by slow suicide, 
to the splendid ideals even now making their way 
into life and action. 

Reform, however, is in part made to appear a slow 
process by the rapid march of our ideals; how 
rapidly the speed of progress is increasing, may be 
somewhat realized with the ability to look back 
through history over the toilsome and wreck-strewn 
pathway of all the bettering changes made previous 
to our time. And with a knowledge of psychology 
and of political economy, it would be possible to see 
something of how slowly we are improving, when 
compared with the speed that might be reached, 
with sufficient knowledge of psychology and of true 
political economy to enable men to act as a unit, 
ar.d consequently without fighting. 

Such knowledge would also act as an excellent 

142 



nerve tonic for impatient, would-be reformers, and 
would soon set up a wiser and more comfortable re- 
form move. Without yet having learned it use, this 
generation holds in its educational storehouse all 
knowledge of importance which has been gained 
during the ages left behind us, and in the ground 
rent which it now allows to flow into private pock- 
ets, to create disturbance, it has the funds of its 
application. 

Awakening appears to take its own time. 
Mental gain has always waited, and must 
still await the slow move of physical adjust- 
ments. Though practice cannot and should not be 
expected to keep pace with theory — the real to over- 
take the ideal — yet practical application should be 
kept in active pursuit of the ideas by which progress 
is pioneered. 

To the degree that men approach right action, 
do they find comfort; to the degree of their de- 
parture therefrom, or to the extent of their wrong 
action do they meet with discomfort. 

When viewed from the surface, these effects of 
the two kinds of action, the good and the bad, seem 
to be reward and punishment, in the human sense 
of understanding. But when seen to accompany 
the unfolding process of all life, and mterpreted 
as Nature's way of making her educational intent 

143 



or plan known through feeling — comfort and dis- 
comfort — is to have reached, we think, a far more 
rational view of their meaning. 

For he who fails to provide himself with the 
specific demands of life — the objects of his desires 
— with food, with clothing, with a place to sleep, 
with friends, with amusement, with a pursuit, with 
information, with a strengthened will, fails to equip 
himself with toleration, with honesty, reliability, 
with self-control, with a variety of things to enjoy, 
and even with things of ambitious endeavor, finds 
himself in a very much worse dilemma than when 
he works to provide them. Earnest, honest en- 
deavor certainly brings, on the whole, an enjoyment 
of life which is never reached by the shirker. 

Whether rich or poor, living requires action from 
all. In time, all are driven to learn that even when 
acting up to their best, the end of each finished 
piece of work, or specific conquest is reached with a 
feeling of comfort, made up of about two-thirds 
satisfaction and one-third of disappointment; while 
failure to live up to the best, adds embarrassment 
to disappointment, and often an entailment of suf- 
fering. 

In his belief that he is the victim of '*hard luck," 
we find the lazy man with tears of self-pity trying 
to obtain help from some worker, and because he 

144 



finds it difficult to be honest, he does not mind get- 
ting it for nothing. 

Nearly every man of action, of thrift, and of 
generous impulse, knows the lazy man by having 
cried to help him, and in return for his generosity, 
by having met not only with loss, but often with 
ingratitude, entire lack of appreciation, and in some 
cases, treatment of a still meaner kind, particularly 
in case assistance has been rendered in a charitable 
way. 

Of course, much of the poverty of the world, and 
much of the dishonesty, may be traced to bad eco^ 
nomic co7iditions, but so may bad economic condi- 
tions be traced to dishonesty, and both can be traced 
to a cause — still more remote — that of ignor- 
ance. Undeniably, the majority of those in need 
are reaping what they have sown. As a rule they 
are shirkers; they are too lazy either to learn or to 
earn, too unwise and extravagant to save for an 
emergency, and need their lessons of distress as a 
spur to awakening action. 

The rebuking experience meted out to the man 
who comes to the rescue, seems to argue very strong- 
ly that by his act he has broken a natural law. 

There are social problems to solve, but so, also, 
are there individual problems to solve, consisting 
of self-improvement and self-support. There is a 

145 



sphere within which each, in order to meet the nat- 
ural requirements of his own unfoldment, must 
work things out for himself, for the law of life's 
action and growth is such that no one can appre- 
ciate that for which he puts forth no effort. 

Man finds himself so constituted and environed, 
that he can and must act; and apparently, until 
such time as action becomes a pleasure, since refusal 
is invariably met with rebuke, in the form of some 
difficulty. The reward of work he finds to be 
growth and enjoyment; and by an effort of the 
will, directed by reason, he ultimately finds that 
laziness can be overcome. 

Since, then, work appears to be an established 
and indispensable requirement of growth and sur- 
vival, it follows that he who does for another that 
which appears to have been cosmically planned for 
this other to do for himself, breaks a natural law, 
involving the payment of a penalty, which, as noted 
above, cannot be shirked. 

It also follows that he who selects himself to act 
as the keeper of his brother's personal affairs, fails 
to understand the law of life and action. In any 
community where some men need to act as keepers 
of other men, this need can usually be traced back 
to some ignorance or dishonesty resulting in de- 
privation. Nature says to us all. ^'Hands off your 

146 



brother^s personality, as well as his possesssions. I 
am his better keeper. If your brother needs you as 
his keeper, it is most likely only because of some 
wrong having been perpetrated — because he has 
either directly or indirectly been despoiled by you 
or others. Allow him a chance, and I will attend 
to his laziness. Except in self-protection against his 
aggressions, hands off your brother and his be- 
longings, or the penalty is yours." 

Any individual may legitimately offer informa- 
tion to another; advice ^ when called for, suggestion 
or education, but to go further in dictating the use 
of all this, means trouble for the dictator. 

For a very good reason. Nature rebukes the med- 
dler. Our charities, and most of our well-meant 
gifts are shown to be wrong by a lack of apprecia- 
tion on the part of the recipient, and even by the 
resentment of those upon whom we try to impose 
them. 

To do a brother's work for him, to give him that 
which will enable him to shirk the best gifts in 
life, his work lessons, tends to injure L)oth parties 
to the transaction. 

Prodigal sons art cultivated. They are petted, 
pampered, neglected and spoiled sons; as a rule they 
are spendthrifts, by not having been taught thrift, 
and appreciation of means with work and economy. 

147 



Than the quickly gained money of the unearned for- 
tune or successful gamble, there is no more deadly 
enemy of thrift, morality and progress in action 
among men. Dwellers of the tropics are Nature^s 
prodigals, reserved for the inspection and enlighten- 
ment of those who, when given effects, can find the 
cause. 

Whatever supplies the needs of men without 
work, before they have learned to like work; what- 
ever enables them to shirk the natural consequences 
of their acts, deprives them of their indispensable 
educational discipline of life. 

Hence, reformatory prohibitions, coercions, sup- 
pressions, and charities fail in their aims — they are 
wrong in principle, and are made to seem right only 
because of the existence of great injustice in the 
world. 

Charity is made necessary by laziness and ignor- 
ance on the one hand, and on the other hand, by 
the dishonest, monopolistic exploiters of men, who 
operate beyond the short, dust-dimmed sight of 
those whom they despoil. 

Despoliation would be impossible, were the ma- 
jcrity of men sufficiently well taught in political 
economy to understand so simple a thing as the 
rental value of land, and the way of its making. 
This once understood, the greed of comparatively 

148 



few men could not deprive the millions of their 
means of education, opportunity for action, and 
legitimate expression of life. Despoliation, how- 
ever, is possible, and because men are uninformed, 
not yet sufficiently awakened to rise above the preju- 
dices of the false education imposed upon them by 
their exploiters, to set up independent thought, and 
throw off the yoke peacefully. 

Life's expression is of two kinds — individual and 
social. As an individual, you have a natural right 
to advise your brother, when advice is called for, but 
not to coerce him. So long as he remains sane, and 
his conduct affects none but himself, you have no 
moral right to restrain him from acting as seems 
to him best, even to the extent of making what you 
call a "fooF' of himself, for this is the way he learns. 

Rebellion is the product of some form of frus- 
tration, such as prohibition, coercion, suppressed ac- 
tion of individual will, injustice; of such laws and 
their administration as strengthen in men the evil 
which they aim to weaken. A brother deprived of 
his right to keep himself, becomes a rebel, and in 
the eyes of a large body of sympathizing friends, 
a martyr. Consequently, a rebel leader is, as a rule, 
a brother deprived of his personal rights. In cases 
where charity does not arouse resentment n the in- 

149 



dividual, it tends further to weaken or to destroy 
his last spark of ambition and self-respect. 

The complaintj even, of the faithful son, tends 
to make the prodigal son appear to the unthinking 
to be a victim of wrong; thus winning for him a 
v/ide circle of sympathizers, who on his return, 
slaughter the ^'fatted calf"; for the many are prodi- 
gal. Unlike the faithful son, whose superiority of- 
fends it, the prodigal element affiliates on a lower 
plane of life, near the stench and the tumult of 
the ebb and flow of the human tide. 

Progress sanctions, even requires, restraint of 
conduct on the part of some, which deprives others 
of their legitimate freedom to act. There will be 
no more wars, when men have learned to practice 
sufficient restraint to act reliably, each remaining 
within his own individual sphere of right. Usurp- 
ative meddling and coercion are destructive of 
happiness. 

This same thing holds true in the matter of in- 
formation giving. Information, including advice, 
may be comfortably taken by thinking men, when 
offered in the form of suggestion, but when forced 
upon them dogmatically, even when of the best, is 
taken by few other than negative minds. 

Nature has set up in her law of progress an 
endeavor to protect the unfoldment of individuality, 

150 



by instituting in the individual a feeling which 
makes him resent deprivation, also the commands, 
particularly the arbitrary commands, which would, 
if complied with, prevent the free action of his will. 

Consequently, most attempts to manage the af- 
fairs of others, meet with rebuke and failure. We 
respect the democracy of the horse, his right to 
select for himself, when on being led to the water 
he refuses to drink, while often failing to pay the 
same respect to our fellow man. 

Independent action provides for the unfoldment 
of individuality, and is the most fundamental law 
of education. 

The mind of the child, therefore, should not be 
dogmatically managed, but led by suggestion — not 
driven out, not lifted and carried out, but stirred 
into sufficient wakefulness to improve by its own 
efforts. 

The freedom to act needs careful guarding. Con- 
sequently, dogmatic education, coercion, prohibi- 
tions are wrong in principle. They are resented 
by the average person, and rejected by all those 
who equipped with natural proclivity, are unfold- 
ing into a larger understanding. 



151 



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A LIST OF HELPFUL BOOKS 



I am carrying continuously about six thou- 
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A famous little book which continues to 
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The Elixir of Life. By Mirza Murad Ali Beg. 

A brief consideration of the means by 
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Price in paper 25c. 

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The Intellectual Development of Europe. By 
J. W. Draper. 2 vols., $3.50. 



The Conflict Between Religion and Science. 
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In Tune With the Infinite. By Ralph Waldo 
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The Bhagavadgita. Price 50c and 75c. 

Selected Papers on Philosophy. By William 
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